Aug 17
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A few months ago I was snooping around in a bookstore somewhere and I noticed a book called The Hole in Our Gospel. It had an interesting picture on the cover and a provocative title, so I looked on the back cover. The author was a man named Richard Stearns who, I learned, was the president of World Vision, USA. Read more
So, why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death… an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end. Death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation. Death by electric chair, lethal injection, and hanging. The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.
Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection
After yet another extended hiatus, on to the fifth of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more
Because it’s Friday, and because we’re all weary of the grinding rationalism that comes along with the science/faith debates, and because, well, just because this so darn silly (and, unfortunately, true), here’s a link that catalogues and offers sometimes hilarious commentary about the bizarre world of church names these days. Read more
I’ve been subscribing to BioLogos website basically since its inception a year or so ago. It has always been an interesting, provocative, and thoughtful forum for learning about and discussing matters related to science and faith. It is a refreshing voice in that, rather than positing science and faith as mortal enemies it seeks to embrace the contributions both make to the quest for truth. Read more
So another Easter has come and gone and I’ve been reflecting on themes of “new life” and “resurrection.” Every Easter we hear words like these proclaimed in churches and we do our best to embrace the hope of the risen Christ. This past Sunday, I was the one proclaiming these words. But do they mean anything? Do they point to anything substantive about what actually has happened, what can happen now, and what will happen in the future? Are words like “resurrection” and “new life” just Christian catch-phrases that are in practice little more than a thinly religious veneer over ordinary concepts like self-help, fresh starts, and second chances? Read more
After a not so brief hiatus, on to the third of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptism: Read more
A feature ran by The Washington Post yesterday has generated a bit of discussion around a study called Preachers Who Are Not Believers by prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola from the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University (those familiar with “The Four Horsemen” of the new atheism will know Dennett well). The study outlines interviews with six “courageous” clergy who maintain their jobs in the pulpit while privately nursing unbelief. It is a classic modern tale of the triumph of reason and the inconsistencies and dissonances that come with the slow, inevitable drift away from faith in the modern world. Read more
On to the second of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more
On to the first of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists: Read more
I couldn’t help but be curious when I saw the title of Vancouver Sun spirituality and ethics columnist Douglas Todd’s latest article come through my reader this afternoon: “Embattled Clergy Could Use Christmas Empathy.” Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I read on to discover why I might be the appropriate destination for someone’s Christmas empathy. Read more
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