Kids love audiobooks. Heck, parents love audiobooks! Our family has enjoyed listening to entertaining renditions of Mr. Popper’s Penguins and My Father’s Dragon on long car rides up the East coast. Many commuters have found audiobooks to be a handy way to redeem the time. Who can say no to a good audiobook? The Read-AloudContinue reading “The Problem with Audiobooks”
Author Archives: Chad C. Ashby
Ivan Ilych and the Middle-Class Avoidance of Death
“What do you want?” There are certain questions that cut straight to the core. Many of us go to great lengths to avoid such questions, filling the silence with noise, Netflix, friends, busyness, work. We cope with the uncomfortable seriousness of these eternal questions with humor and sarcasm. In the end, it’s avoidance. We don’tContinue reading “Ivan Ilych and the Middle-Class Avoidance of Death”
What Feels Like Suffering Is Your Salvation
There are many reasons we drift. Familiarity. Fatigue. Apathy. And pain. If you’ve had kids, you know that one way babies deal with pain is by drifting off to sleep. Sometimes, we deal with pain and suffering the same way. The author of Hebrews knows that. That’s why, when he’s addressing “those who are toContinue reading “What Feels Like Suffering Is Your Salvation”
‘Work’ by Daniel Doriani (A Free Discipleship Resource!)
“The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should makeContinue reading “‘Work’ by Daniel Doriani (A Free Discipleship Resource!)”
Why Expository Preaching, Again?
This Sunday our church dove back into 2 Samuel, picking up right where we’d left off in November. The return gave us a good opportunity to revisit a foundational question: Why expository preaching? Why do we preach chapter by chapter, verse by verse, through every word of books like 2 Samuel or Acts or 1Continue reading “Why Expository Preaching, Again?”
Do You Know How Arius Died?
I’ve been preaching a Christmas sermon series based on Athanasius’s seminal work On the Incarnation, and this morning’s opening illustration was too good to pass up. For context, I’m preaching on Matthew 2:1-12 (the story of the wise men), but I’ve been in the habit of setting up the sermon with some fun tidbits fromContinue reading “Do You Know How Arius Died?”
Struggling for Thankfulness This Year?
This year has been a strange one, and I wonder as you reflect back on all the hardship of 2020 whether you are struggling to find reasons to give thanks. Traditionally, Christmas is the holiday that gets all the songs and carols and hymns. November 1st, radios start dusting off the ol’ yuletide catalog. ButContinue reading “Struggling for Thankfulness This Year?”