The Kingdom Perspective

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. We should take great comfort in the terror and tenderness of Jesus. Now, I realize that this may seem a strange way of speaking of Jesus, and perhaps a bit counterintuitive—that He is both terrifying and tender. Nonetheless, when John details His appearance in the book of the Revelation, He is desc...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   The kind of community that the New Testament calls us to is radically different than what you may find in the world. Non-Christians create all sorts of different communities where people feel welcomed, and many times it’s really quite wonderful. But such community is based on affinities such as s...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. One of the most difficult things in life is having an accurate self-assessment. Knowing who you are (and who you are not) is foundational to everything in your life. However, achieving this is very difficult because we tend to have a high view of ourselves. We play a game of puffing up and...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   We live in a day that is cynical about leaders and institutions. This is true in government, education, business, health care and the arts—but maybe especially in the church. Sadly, in some instances this cynicism is warranted due to abuses of power and position. However, the existence o...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. The early church was distinctive for many reasons, but one of the most powerful was the quality of loving community found among in it. Tertullian, the 3rd century church leader, wrote a number of works defending the gospel in the face of persecution (see, To the Gentiles and Apology). In o...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Sometimes we can struggle to have patience with the weakness we see in others. This impatience speaks not to our superiority but to our sin. God is patient with the weak. Worse, sometimes we can struggle to have patience with weakness in ourselves. We are disappointed with the weakness of our own f...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome the Kingdom Perspective.   Sometimes, you see things better as an outsider than an insider. For example, when you first move to a new community, certain cultural distinctions about that community stand out.   One of the things that struck me when I first moved to the Dartmouth College area was how hesitant, even inse...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   We tend to be fearful of difficult circumstances. Often, underneath this fear is not merely a revulsion to hard things, but a faulty belief system that equates suffering and pain with God’s lack of care and concern. But such thinking is categorically false.   Trouble is no sign that God...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Remember that great line from that classic 1980’s film “The Princess Bride”? “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Now, we can be assured that the Bible is not trying to sell us something. It is “straight up”. It tells us that fear, pain and suffering are real....

Transcript:   Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   Self-advancement and self-justification are intuitive to the human heart. We constantly not only put ourselves first, but also justify why we do it. As Katharine Roberts, director of Verity Fellowship puts it: “[A]ccording to the world, life is like a ladder. At the top of the ladder is success,...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. In one very profound sense Christians do not live for this world. And, because of that, in a very profound sense that’s the best possible thing for this world. What do I mean? Think of it this way. What causes all the injustice and fighting in this world? In large part it is driven by our lying, st...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. The only way you can come to Jesus is as a sinner. As a matter of fact, if you come to Jesus as anything other than the Savior of your sins, you will not find the true Jesus. Rather, you will find at best a grotesque caricature of Him. Jesus is not the mascot for your favorite political or...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Your sin is no match for the riches of God’s grace. Where sin abounds, grace super-abounds! You may be overwhelmed by the seriousness of your sin and the debt you owe God’s justice. You may be filled with shame at the spiritual and moral crimes you’ve committed. You may be embarrassed for your cont...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Jesus loves sinners. You could even rightfully say that He prefers sinners. But, our problem is that we tend to make too little of our sin, and therefore too little of our Savior. We pretend that our sin is not as bad as it is, or that God is not as mad at sin as He is. Now, we could stop here, and...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Our culture correctly tells us that we should: “Speak truth to power.” The idea is that power must be properly used. It must be constrained by what is true, good, and beautiful. Though sadly Christians at times and places have not lived into this proposition, nonetheless, this is a deeply biblical...

Transcript: Hello, this Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   What comes to mind when you think of meditation? Sitting silently with your legs crossed? Trying to think of the “sound of nothing”?   Well, the irony is that as modern Western secular people, we tend to have an Eastern religious view of meditation. We tend to see meditation as emptying our minds—tr...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. At our cultural moment we are in desperate need of optimism, and there is no better place to turn for that than historic Christianity. Christianity is an optimistic religion. Now, don’t get me wrong. Christianity does not turn a blind eye to the reality of evil. It does not tip toe around the uglin...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. At times of civil unrest and deep cultural division, people tend to be on edge. They feel threatened and under attack. They assume a lot about their opponents and tend to attribute evil motives. Every little gesture, every little word, is scrutinized in the most negative light. Now, in suc...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Arguably, the Bible speaks of the church more as an organism than an organization. The Church is the very life of Christ—His breath, His Spirit, His Word giving the church its being and vibrancy. To the degree that the church is filled with Jesus’s Spirit (see Ephesians 5:18 and Galatian...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   What do you do when you walk into a dark room? Do you stumble around complaining about the lack of light? No. You walk into the room and turn on the light. And if the light’s not working you grab a flashlight. The only way to deal with darkness is light.   The same is true spiritually. It’s often...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Arguably the most basic thing to a church culture is the shared mindset or attitude of its members. It is not so much the stated mission or strategy of a church that matters as much as the vibe its members give off, especially as they gather. This vibe flows from the shared mindset—the d...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to the Kingdom Perspective. How should we respond to the cultural chaos we see all around? We should learn from earlier Christians, such as St. Patrick, and the churches that originated from him. When European civilization was overwhelmed by barbarian hordes, the recently converted Celtic tribes preserved, and then e...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. We were made by God and for God. Therefore, our souls are slaves if we live for anything other than Him. The degree to which our souls are centered around and driven by anything other than our Maker is the degree to which we are imprisoned—barred from fulfilling our destiny and delight. And this is...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Someone has well said: “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”.   By culture we mean those shared values, truths, and ways of operating that define a group of people. Culture is something “organic”, not merely organizational. Like the “culture” in a petri dish, it has a life of its own. It’s a...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   The church is an adaptable institution because the gospel can work its redemptive magic in any and every situation. It’s a culture not merely a strategy. By culture we mean a shared way of thinking, feeling, and living that is driven by the very life of Jesus. At the heart of the church...