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Posts from the ‘Church’ Category

Feb 10

23 Comments

Pilgrims in Enmity?

I had breakfast yesterday with a couple of friends, one of whom happens to be the interim editor of our denominational magazine, the Mennonite Brethren Herald. Not surprisingly, the conversation eventually touched on the January issue of the Herald which was devoted to the doctrine of creation. Perhaps less surprisingly, given the nature of the  issue’s content, my editor friend has been getting a bit of heat—both directly, via email, and indirectly via the blogosphere—from those on the “young earth” end of the spectrum. Even less surprisingly, the rhetoric can (and does) quickly turn fairly nasty when it comes to topics like these (I’ve reflected on this before here). Apparently, we still have much work to do when it comes to learning how to disagree Christianly. Read more

Jan 31

51 Comments

Bonhoeffer: Book Review

Four years ago, as I was nearing the completion of my coursework at Regent College, I somewhat naively signed up for a seminar on the life and thought of German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. My only exposure to him to that point had been his famous book The Cost of Discipleship (a book whose title in German, I would soon discover was simply Nachfolge, or Discipleship. The change has been made in Augsburg Fortress’s republishing of the definitive collection of Bonhoeffer’s works). I had read this book in my early twenties, but my recollection of its themes was unimpressive, to put it mildly. Read more

Jan 24

41 Comments

On “Relevance”

Over at Faith and Leadership, Timothy Larsen has posted a withering critique of the church’s never-ending pursuit of the Holy Grail of “relevance.” It’s a pretty short article, and well worth the read. If you are at all involved in church leadership and recognize some of your own experience here, perhaps you will be emboldened and spurred on to determined new heights of (appropriate) irrelevance. If nothing else, perhaps it will evoke a kind of grim laughter for those who have spent any time at all in and around certain expressions of North American church life. Here are a few memorable quotes from what I found to be an insightful (if disturbing) article. Read more

Jan 19

32 Comments

Thank God for the Light

Last Thursday afternoon was an afternoon like many others, for me. The workday was winding down; I was cleaning up a few loose ends before heading home to take my daughter to the pool for swim club. In many ways, it had been a good afternoon—nice and quiet, mostly uninterrupted, and ideal for sermon writing and reflection. Read more

Jan 11

13 Comments

The Church, It is a-Changing

At any given time, I have between 25-30 unpublished, half/barely-started posts or links to interesting articles occupying space in my “drafts” folder. Needless to say, things can get buried pretty easily, so I try to periodically root through this folder to see what I once thought was interesting/worth posting on, and to determine what might need to see the light of day (or be consigned to the cyber-scrap heap!). Read more

Dec 14

17 Comments

Confession

A post by Andrew Stephens-Rennie over at Empire Remixed has got me thinking about confession.  My sense is that confession is seen as something of a dirty word in our culture, conjuring up all kinds of unpleasant images of nosy priests and slavish religious rituals meant to assuage unnecessary guilt.  Confession isn’t a popular concept in a self-obsessed culture suspicious of religious power and those who wield it and where we seem to almost instinctively think of ourselves as victims of the myriad forces that act upon us rather than active and willful contributors to the brokenness of our world. Read more

Dec 6

17 Comments

We Always Need Storytellers

Over on a previous post, there has been an interesting conversation going on about the nature of preaching and the role it plays (or ought to play) in the life of the church. A number of issues have been raised, but among the more interesting (and personally relevant!) ones, from my perspective, is the extent to which the task of preaching is used to legitimate the existence of religious “professionals.” Read more

Nov 29

39 Comments

Something to Say

I preached my thirty-sixth sermon yesterday, which, in and of itself, is not a particularly momentous number or occasion, but which nonetheless, was an experience that provoked a bit of reflection. Preaching is a practice that has taken some time for me to grow into. I still find it incredibly odd that people actually entrust me with twenty minutes of their precious time on Sunday morning. And I often think that God has an incredible (or incredibly weird?) sense of humour in sticking the introverted kid who talks too fast and stutters too much in front of a microphone every Sunday. Read more

Oct 6

8 Comments

The Whole Jesus

Next month, the British Columbia Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (of which the church I serve at is a part) will be holding another event to further discuss some of our differences (or perceived differences) regarding how we are to understand the cross of Christ. The atonement debate has been simmering in these parts for a while now (I’ve reflected on it here, here, here, and here if you’re interested in any background). Some see a decreasing emphasis in the penal substitution component of what the cross accomplished, and think that this represents a compromise of the gospel. Others see room for locating penal substitution within a broader understanding of what was achieved at Calvary. This event is an attempt to better understand and talk about these differences. Read more

Sep 28

4 Comments

Sacred Spaces

Anyone involved in church work in a twenty-first century, Western, post-Christian context is familiar with the common trend toward declining church attendance (see here, for some figures from the American context). The story is a well-rehearsed one: people are interested in “spirituality” not institutional “religion.” Churches are places of lifeless formalism. And if churches don’t do anything for us, why bother with them? Why not spend a Sunday morning enjoying the outdoors or our kids’ sporting activities, or a quiet cafe and a newspaper, or… fill in the blank. Read more

Sep 15

8 Comments

Who Is This God?

Richard Dawkins famously opens chapter two of The God Delusion with the following oft-quoted, adjectivally promiscuous salvo:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Read more

Aug 17

5 Comments

Something Stronger

Ordinarily, I am entrusted with the task  of preaching once per month but because of summer holidays and staff vacations I find myself in middle of preparing three consecutive sermons.  I am enjoying the opportunity, but I am also gaining an appreciation for those whose regular task is weekly preaching!  As I sit down this morning to begin preparing for next Sunday, a couple of quotes that came through my inbox last week are bouncing around in my head. Read more

Aug 13

20 Comments

Big Tent Christianity

In just under a month, an interesting “first” will be taking place in Raleigh, NC. Big Tent Christianity: Being and Becoming the Church is a conference/conversation being held to talk about what it is that unites followers of Jesus from a broad range of contexts and perspectives and how we can live and work and talk together in a spirit of cooperation, respect. It is intended to reflect a willingness to learn from rather than shout at/about one another in this crazy thing called the church. It is an attempt to come together under the “big tent” of the body of Christ and to recognize that the big tent is more important than the little tents that we are, perhaps, more familiar and comfortable with. Read more

Aug 12

1 Comment

Notes to Self

Some of the bigger blogs I subscribe to typically have something like a weekend round-up type post which serves as an aggregator of the miscellaneous articles, video clips, and other assorted cyber-scraps that the author(s) happen to have come across over the course of the past week.  I don’t usually spend much time on these posts because there are just too many links and rabbit trails and I can’t be bothered.  I have occasionally found the odd gem in these laundry lists of links, but I’m increasingly finding that I just don’t have the patience for the random nature of these posts. Read more

Aug 5

9 Comments

Whatever You Did for the Least of These

One of the best things about being a pastor is simply the opportunity to hear people’s stories, and to see the many and varied ways that God has of drawing people to himself and his purposes.  Yesterday I was in conversation with a person who is on the journey from a dark and destructive past to a more hopeful future.  This person continues to have struggles and has many unresolved issues and unanswered questions, but they are walking in the right direction.  It was good to hear their story and to be able to offer a bit of encouragement. Read more

Jul 23

15 Comments

The Warranty

I’ve been back home in southern Alberta for the last week or so and am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to reconnect with friends and relatives. Many of these people spent time in paid church ministry over the last decade or so. Some continue to work in the church, while the majority have moved on to other things. Given that so many people in my circle of family and friends have some experience in paid ministry, it seems like every conversation, at some point, invariably touches on the church. Read more

Jul 18

22 Comments

Family Matters II: Some Reflections on Celebration 2010

So, Celebration 2010 (a recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Mennonite Brethren family held in the Vancouver area this past week) has come and gone and I find myself in reflection mode. One of the topics that generated significant discussion and debate was the nature of our Mennonite Brethren identity. Are we evangelical Anabaptists or Anabaptist Evangelicals? What is it, exactly, that we gather around as people from such diverse contexts? Is it theology? A shared history/common story? Is it relationships that have formed between people and communities over time? All of the above? And what happens if/when these individual commonalities and relationships begin to break down, as some see to be the case in the Canadian MB context? Read more

Jul 15

Family Matters

Well, summer is here and the posting around here continues to be somewhat sparse. This week I am in the Vancouver area attending Celebration 2010, our Mennonite Brethren denomination’s 150th birthday party. I have been spending the week with people from around the world learning more about MB identity and celebrating the ways in which God has worked in our collective story. Read more

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