Jesus’ arrest and trial before Annas and Caiaphas are followed by the trial before Pilate, who cannot find any reason to convict Jesus.

The year 2020 has been an extraordinary year. For me as a Christian leader, two themes have dominated the complicated developments of 2020: Religious liberty issues inherent in a number of Supreme Court decisions and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

O. Alan Noble of Oklahoma Baptist University perceptively and solemnly observes, “Whether you describe it as a decadent society or a decaying culture or a democracy dying in darkness, 2020 has given us a taste for what Cormac McCarthy once described as ‘the frailty of everything revealed at last.’ We have been frail for a very long time, but what we could deny before has been made glaringly manifest through a pandemic, racial injustice, social unrest, mass unemployment, and a highly contentious presidential election that earnest folks on both sides have described in existential terms.

As our high priest, Jesus prays that His Father will be glorified by His sacrifice, that the Father will keep His disciples from the evil one, and that His church will manifest a unity, a unity evident among the members of the godhead.

Meaningful spirituality focuses on four components: meaning, purpose, community, and ritual. Centered in Jesus Christ, genuine, biblical Christianity offers eternally significant content to these four components. However, within American culture today an amalgamation of cultural forces constitute what Tara Isabella Burton calls “Remixed Spirituality.”

Jesus teaches that the Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment and that He teaches and guides in all truth.

Using the analogy of a vine and the branches, Jesus challenges us to “abide in Him,” a dependency on HIm that has four intended results and four key characteristics.

Years ago, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an important book entitled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, in which he documented the role paranoia, fear and conspiracy theories have played in American political culture. He called it “an arena for angry minds.”

A major premise of Scripture is that leaders are always called to a higher standard. Indeed, spiritual leaders in the church and in ministry are called to be “above reproach” (1 Timothy 3:2). Leaders in ministry are to be servant leaders, modeling the biblical truths they espouse (see Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 22:21-30 and John 13:1-17). Leaders are to avoid even the “appearance of evil” in their lifestyles and in their words (1 Thessalonians 5:22).

Jesus introduces the facets of the New Covenant Community–prayer, the Holy Spirit, the new circle of love in Christ and Christ’s peace.