Old Thought, New Expression

One of those things I first thought at least a decade ago finds expression in the printed word:
The idea of God as  a being who is unchanging, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and thus always right is more of a philosophical rendering than a biblical one. In metaphysical theology God is thought to be the perfect [...]

Truth

Jack Nicholson was probably right. Tom Cruise couldn’t handle the truth.
Can you? Can I? Can we?
Claims about truth get thrown around like scud missiles.
Some in the church lament the loss of the day when we believed there was absolute truth (or should I say “Absolute Truth” and that we (the church) had it.
Some [...]

Goods and Problems

My father-in-law sent me this article from the Boston Globe.  Here is the key paragraph, at least by my judgment:
Poverty and wealth, by this logic, don’t just fall along a continuum the way hot and cold or short and tall do. They are instead fundamentally different experiences, each working on the human psyche in its [...]

Top Ten

A good friend and colleague asked me for my “top ten books for youth ministry or personal top ten.”
Here’s what I told him:

Christianity for the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler-Bass
Practicing Passion, by Kenda Creasy Dean
Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder
Soul Searching, by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton
Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, by Andrew Root
Postmodern [...]

More Thoughts on Conversion

I’ve blogged about conversion already here and here, but some additional thoughts swept into my mind late last week.  This is the first time since then I’ve really had time to share them.
In matters other than religious conversion, people are generally advised not to make major life decisions during times of extreme stress.  For example,  [...]

Don’t Tempt Me!

Twice in the last 4 days I have heard preachers teach that the story of the Fall implicates God in our sinfulness. That’s not the way to tell the story; the next time I hear a trained clergy do so, I may scream!
Both times the story of God telling the man and woman not [...]

John the Baptist speaks today

As I ponder Matthew 3:1-12 as part of this week’s lectionary, I can’t help but think of a fascinating bit of NT (New Testament) insight from NT (Nicholas Thomas) Wright.
The passage is about the ministry of John the Baptist. We all know what that was about, right? Eating Locusts and honey, wearing camel’s hair, [...]

Haunting words from 3 years ago

Doing research for this Sunday, I ran across this from Theodore J. Wardlaw, President of Austin Presbyterian Seminary.  He spoke these words in December of 2004:
In spite of how much I’ve wanted to support and encourage some of you who are heading toward military chaplaincies and, [...]

Pastors Retreat Network

I did something this past week that you should do. I went on a spiritual retreat.
Rachel and I went to Selah Inn at the Ranch for a retreat run by the Pastors Retreat Network.
We had a remarkable week. One of the rules was “if it starts to feel like work, quit!” I didn’t work all [...]

Must-Read

Sally Morgenthaler wrote the book on worship as evangelism. Literally; she wrote the book.
In the latest edition of the Next-Wave E-zine, she writes about her change of course. In this article, Morgenthaler acknowledges that, important as worship is, recent research shows that we are not, in general, reaching the world around us by focusing [...]