I ask a not so trivial Bible trivia question – What OT passage about God is most frequently quoted by OT persons?

Luke may have majored in math since he described the early church with words like full number, added, increased, and multiplied. Becoming and being church was a matter of doing the math.

“Oh, the B I B L E, that’s the book for me.”

I have been told to shut up a few times recently. More often I regret that I opened my mouth. But I refer to a colloquial exclamation of shock, surprise, or incredulity at some event in one’s life. On a deeper level, Scripture speaks of times when God’s prophets “shut their mouths” or tell their hearers to be silent. Let us inquire what they have to say to us.

While we traditionally call Abraham the “father of faith” it might be better to call him and his wife the father and mother of faith strugglers.

If you read my last article, I suspect that you asked what I meant when I proposed that we “perform Psalm 77.” How does a congregation perform a psalm? Why Psalm 77?

Although this article is about remembering, I thank John Coffey for forgetting to change the address for his Journal of Christian Studies. They come to the church address, I read them and forward them to John. Often they are so good that I forget. I refer to the September issue on Theology of Suffering and the article, A Theology of Remembrance in Psalm 77. I invite you to read that lament Psalm.

No, I do not have a prophecy about the future of congregational singing. For those of you who worry about that future, Mark Shipp says there are good reasons to worry in his article, Congregation Song Is in Trouble in January’s issue of the Journal of Christian Studies. I recommend reading it and his positive answer, What Makes a Good Hymn.

All the churches we read about in the New Testament were singing churches. The churches we read about in the centuries that followed were singing churches. In fact. the term acapella, singing without accompaniment of musical instruments, simply means “in the manner of the church.” I affirm that the church today should be a singing church, i.e. acapella. Why? 1) They had many wonderful things to sing about and 2) They were following the teachings of the Lord through his personal representatives. In this lesson I emphasize #1 and will sketch the reasons for #2.