Book Review: Through the River

Yesterday I found myself thinking I might share this book I’ve just finished with someone. I thought it might help.  I was immediately confused because my first impressions of Through the River weren’t good.
The book is Through the River: Understanding your assumptions about the truth. It is my latest read for review for the Viral [...]

The End of Your Story

My friends Jason and Kyle are talking a lot about story lately, but here’s a twist on your story that comes from a conversation had by Rachel the other day that she shared with me last night. This kind of follows on Kyle’s post today.
How would you like your obituary to read?
What would you think [...]

Lover’s Quarrel with “A Lover’s Quarrel”?

Viral Blogger Book Review no. 2:
Warren Cole Smith’s “A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church.”
You are a backslider! You’re the worst kind of “Christian;” a lukewarm, liberal Christian.  You probably don’t’ even believe in the Bible!
So I can imagine the 18 year old Steve Heyduck saying, were he to meet the 45 year old Steve [...]

Who needs Diversity of Experience?

Do youth or adults in the church need more experience of diversity?
Heard a speech here at Annual Conference about a bishop who, thinking it important to open “Christians to diverse expressions of our faith,” began an annual trip to the Taize community.
I am all for helping youth experience a variety of Christian expression. I am, [...]

Truth from Fiction

Last Friday Rachel and I were sitting at Barnes & Noble reading.  (This has become a very enjoyable habit for us)  We were privileged to witness a class from a local elementary school on a field trip to visit the store.
I have to admit it was a little distracting, but well worth it if even [...]

If I would have preached…

Yesterday I took a very rare sick day.  I woke up  not feeling very well.  I expected it might pass in time for me to preach, but I have an excellent intern from Perkins School of Theology, so I called him in, with 1 1/2 hours notice, to preach for me.
All reports are that he [...]

The Gospel in 3 Minutes

HT to my big brother Richard for this video by James Choung. What a great, concise, easey to follow telling of the gospel!

Which God?

In a conversation with a student the other day, I learned that her mom is Muslim.  I asked if she was, she said no, that she wasn’t Muslim and “Don’t really consider myself anything.”
I am almost always curious about people’s self-identified religious persuasions, so I pursued this.  She explained that she thinks all the religions [...]

Come or Go Christianity

I’ve just finished reading Eddie Gibbs & Ryan K. Bolger’s Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures.  I’ll be sharing some thoughts from and interactions with the book.  Overall,
I highly recommend this book.  It’s a relatively easy read that does a good job of presenting the “emerging chruch” movement/dialogue/conversation/phenomenon well.
Steve Collins of Grace [...]

Want a new search?

Welcome Cuil to the world of search engines. Wired carried the story today that Cuil (pronounced “cool”) has been launched to challenge Google by some former Google employees.
Cuil boasts that it searches a whooping 120 billion websites.  One of the things Cuil offers to differentiate it from Google is that it won’t retain your search [...]