Forde Lives

I’m rereading Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life because it’s just so good. I think it should be required reading somewhere. I’m not sure where, maybe if you’re thinking about a career in ministry. Maybe if you’re an angsty teenager who needs to read something good for you (this book is post-confirmation goodness, folks!). Maybe if you’re an old salt who needs a balm for your weary theological muscles. Anyway, I’m going to write a study guide for it, mark my words. (more…)

Thoughts for church leaders:
Do you use a confession of sins in your worship?
Do you use terminology like “we are in bondage to sin” “what we have done and what we have left undone” ?
Is confession corporate?
Do you feel like we lost something in not naming particular sins?

This writer agrees with the reformers’ sentiments “who can enumerate all his errors?” because that is a cry of confession against the whole of sin, the many powers that devastate us. But I wonder if also we (from the reformation tradition) have misplaced our ability to confession actual sins when we have begun to confess Sin.

There’s something in Forde’s language around the specificity of love and proclamation, the reality of it, that I think we can also acknowledge in sin. In their preparations for worship, perhaps leaders can take time to address a particular sin, or ask the community to speak a particular sin in the act of confessing.