At New City Church Mother’s Day came and went without a single mention of mothers in our worship service. Father’s Day also came and went without honoring fathers. This Sunday is July 3 and we will not mention Independence Day. As a church we hold to the historic Christian sexual ethic. This includes what is…

I was recently asked a question about baptism. Specifically, I was asked what our requirements are for baptism. To answer this we must first explore what baptism even is. We can quickly dismiss the notion that it’s a mere formality. It is often treated as such, especially by those who hold to a credobaptist view,…

I was asked yesterday about the meaning of something Paul wrote in 1 Timothy. First Timothy has some of the most debated words in all of Scripture! The specific question I was asked is this: “We know we are saved by grace through faith, yet Paul writes verse 15.” She’s referring to 1 Timothy 2:15.…

Racism is an ugly word, and it’s one that is often conflated with the related—but very distinct—word prejudice. In short, prejudice is a prejudgment. We all experience prejudice. If you run into a young man in the grocery store who is 6’10”, you probably assume he plays basketball. This is a rather neutral form of…

There are several warnings—and promises!—in Scripture that can cause us to wonder if they apply to us specifically. Not a single word of Scripture was written to us in 21st-century Grand Rapids, yet it was all written for us. This means we must wrestle with a text from our modern lens of the world, including…