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Every Piece Matters: Placed by God. Needed in the Body.

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  by Bart Denny A reflection on 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 (adapted from a sermon preached at Pathway Church in Saranac, Michigan on May 3 and available here ). Here's something I've never quite admitted out loud. There have been moments in my life — in ministry, even — where I quietly wondered if I actually mattered. Not in a dramatic, crisis-of-faith kind of way. It was subtler than that. I'd look around and think, Someone else could do this better than me. Maybe I'm not really that necessary here. I wouldn't have said it out loud. But the thought was there — that quiet assumption that if I stayed on the edges, if I didn't fully engage, everything would probably still be fine. Someone more gifted would pick it up. Someone more visible would carry it. I could just… hang back. And if I'm honest, most of the time that didn't come from laziness. It came from comparison. From not being sure that what I brought really made much of a difference. From finding it e...
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Did the Early Church Fathers Believe in a Pretribulational Rapture?

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by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. I wrote this article years ago, and while I still see value in some of the arguments presented, my view has become more settled with time. Let me say it plainly: No, the early church fathers did not believe in a pretribulation rapture —at least not in the way John Nelson Darby and modern dispensationalists since the 1800s have taught it. They didn’t believe in it for one very good reason: the Bible didn’t teach it that way , and they were far closer—both chronologically and culturally—to the apostles than we are. But what did they believe? Let’s explore. Reading the Fathers with a Clear Eye Some scholars and popular writers have tried to find early traces of the pretribulation rapture among the church fathers. The argument often goes like this: If these early Christians believed in the imminent return of Christ and held to a millennial reign, then maybe—just maybe—they also believed in a secret rapture of the church before a Great Tribulation. Sounds in...
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