Jonathan Ciecka

The point of a story is not to be original. The point of a story is to relate to other people. We may be different, you and me. We may even be vastly different. But there are some aspects of our stories that make it possible to see ourselves in each other. If I told […]

Silence is a finicky thing. In the forest, silence is a beautiful thing. After a sales pitch, silence is long and uncomfortable. After a gospel presentation, silence is heartbreaking. Silence combined with deadness of face, just for a second, was the worst experience I’ve felt in a long time. Two young women sat in my […]

Editor’s note: At Renew.org, we have a way of organizing the various elements/doctrines of Christianity into the categories of “essential,” “important,” and “personal.” (See Chad Ragsdale’s book in the Real Life Theology series called Christian Convictions for an explanation of these categories.) While the book being reviewed here offers a different way of organizing Christian […]

You’ve probably heard it said before that the Bible is God’s word. While that’s true, there’s more to the story. God’s word encompasses more than just the Bible. God’s word is everything that He has ever spoken, written, and inspired people to speak and write. God has spoken through creation, in what is often referred […]

Making an Atheist I grew up in a church that encouraged me to become an atheist. I didn’t leave Christianity because of any moral objections or being hurt by a church. I left because of that church’s grounding for its faith. They offered an apologetics class where the teacher very confidently explained many geological, cosmological, […]