I am in a sometimes awkward position of having an adolescent child while I work with a couple hundred adolescents.
Professionally, I think I am pretty good at what I do. I have the skills, the passion, and the dedication to keep me level-headed (for the most part) and consistent. I communicate well with adolescents (generally); [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘christian culture’
November 3, 2009
Giving Advice
October 28, 2009
Finding Identity-Thinking Ethnically
I have trouble dealing with ethnicity. It isn’t that I have trouble dealing with people who have an ethnicity. No, my problem, like that of very many of us, is that Anglo-Americans have generally grown up without any ethnicity. In fact, I would argue that the American Myth is that the only identity or ethnicity [...]
October 22, 2009
Maybe Jesus was a carpenter…
We went around the table, each of us sharing something we got from the devotional that had just been read. Toward the end, most of us settled into repeating something like: “Take your problems to God; God can solve any problem.”
The final girl said, almost under her breath, “God can’t solve every problem.”
Without thinking, almost [...]
October 7, 2009
Blame
It is NOT my fault. I didn’t get the email.
Wasn’t that someone else’s responsibility?
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell,* to the unquenchable fire.* 45And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut [...]
October 6, 2009
We’re all Users
I’m reading Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint’s Come on People: on the path from Victims to Victors. On p. 32 they write:
One way slaves survived such brutal conditions was to turn the Christianity they had learned into a liberation theology. The stories of the Hebrew slaves became their own. Even as slave owners used the [...]
October 2, 2009
We Are Missing the Point
“I hope I won’t go to hell for that,” said the teenager.
It broke my heart to hear this young woman who has grown up in the church, who is a leader and who, in all she says and does seems to “get it” still wonders in her heart if she will end up in hell.
Grace.
Jesus [...]
September 30, 2009
Control
When I get up earlier than Rachel, as I have this morning, I shut doors between the end of the house where she is sleeping and the end of the house where Wesley (our cat) and I are up and around.
Wesley doesn’t like this. He complains.
So, in a long tradition of anthropomorphizing, I try to [...]
September 24, 2009
Commercializing Ministry?
Some of the bloggers I follow have moved their blogs to beliefnet. This includes Ben Witherington, Scot McKnight, Tony Jones, and others. I don’t know te motivations, or variety thereof, behind signing on with beliefnet.
But I do know this: everytime I go to a beliefnet.com blog, I get an ad that opens down over the [...]
September 14, 2009
Warning for Youth Ministers
Responsibility is a booger.
A youth shared with me that he “could teach anyone here a lot about religion,” but that he no longer considers himself a Christian.
Here’s the short version of his story about why he is now an “agnostic” (his term). He grew up going to church, and the church had trouble keeping a [...]
September 10, 2009
THE Christian view on Health Care in America?
I’ve heard and read this several places, so I won’t cite one particular source here, but this seems to me to be the best question for someone (Christian) to ask concerning health care in the United States:
“Does my neighbor
have reasonable access
to adequate health care?”
If the next thing that comes to your mind is “Who is [...]





