Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Faith

The search for meaning, purpose, and relationship. Our need for love compels us to seek it out, and when we find it, share it.

  • Sermon as Teaching

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    7 min read

    My Dad’s a good preacher. He isn’t the lift the roof off the rafters type. Nor is he egg-heady with scattered references to German theologians. And he isn’t a daily living preacher, either. He doesn’t do genre. He does story and he tries to make sense of the gospel and what people are dealing with…

    2

  • Preach

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    5 min read

    “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel” Outside the chapel, Paul’s words belie the most simple of Christian conditions. The call to serve GOD through Christ is deeply personal. “Woe is me,” we might argue, “not woe is we.” Then we keep going. “Woe is me If I preach not the gospel.” This is on…

    2

  • Gospel

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    5 min read

    I first really heard the gospel in school. I was in an undergrad Bible class on Paul; the kind of distributive requirement that seemed like a natural fit for me. English major; PK (priest’s kid). The professor was an Orthodox bishop, Makarios. And his thick Indian accent meant that we had to really listen. Listen…

    3

  • New Testament

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    4 min read

    The New Testament is about Jesus. The later testament, this one written in Greek, is simple really. It tells the story of Jesus and then his followers. In some ways, the text we refer to as the New Testament never gets much more complicated than that. The complexity doesn’t actually come from the Greek Scriptures…

    1

  • Old Testament

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    5 min read

    Let me begin by saying that I shy away from the term “Old Testament”. Yes, I’m one of those people. My concern with the name (and its companion, the New Testament) is not that they aren’t PC enough. It is that they are too narrowly prescriptive and restrict the beauty and depth of our scripture.…

    2

  • Bible

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    5 min read

    I remember a point in my life, not a precise moment, but a time period, in which I realized that the Bible had a lot more in there than I had learned in Sunday School. I was probably 10. We were talking about Samson and his super powers and his kryptonite magic hair and I…

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