Jul 24
My first “official” responsibility in my new position took place a week or so earlier than schedule, as I officiated at a memorial service on a sunny, breezy, southern Alberta Saturday. It was a somewhat strange thing to be leading a service like this before even attending a Sunday morning service! Read more
Well, the lazy days of summer just roll on... After a great few days camping in BC with my brother and his family, yesterday afternoon was spent participating in a local golf tournament/fundraiser for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. My father is one of the coordinators for the local growing project here, and when he asked my brother and I if we wanted to go golfing to support a good cause, we could hardly say no (despite the fact that we are both truly abysmal golfers!).
I know there have been more than a few nostalgic posts about home—leaving, returning, etc—over the past few weeks, but I hope you’ll permit me at least one more. We’ve been back home in southern Alberta for just over two weeks now, and given that I don’t officially begin in my new position until August 1, I have had a fair amount of time for reflection upon the nature of “home.”
In conversations about religion in Canada these days, one frequently comes across some variation of the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” The implication often seems to be that “spirituality” represents openness, inclusivity, tolerance, and a host of other virtues, while “religion” is associated with the nasty dogmatism and rigid moralism of institutional church structures. Spirituality = good; religion = bad. That seems to about cover it, in many estimations. Read more
Things have been pretty quiet around here for a while, so perhaps something of an update post is in order. The past two weeks or so have been spent saying difficult goodbyes to our friends in Nanaimo and packing up and moving back east to our roots in southern Alberta.
I’ve been thinking a fair amount about narratives recently, for personal and professional reasons. On a personal level, I suppose major transitions in life always afford the opportunity to re-evaluate things—where have I come from, where am I going, what are my reasons, what have I learned, how will it affect what may or may not lie ahead, what changes should I make, how is God guiding, shaping, and using my story, etc, etc. These are normal things to consider whenever we close one chapter and begin another. Read more
As hard as it is to believe, my two lovely children are on the verge of completing their first decade on planet earth. It’s been an incredible ride so far. We have been blessed beyond measure both with the members of our family and how we have been put together.
Our own adoptive journey came to mind when I was directed to this post by Megan Hyatt Miller (h/t: Jesus Creed) on whether or not adoption is becoming “trendy.” Read more
During my sermon yesterday, I made some remark about how such and such a way of looking at the Christian life was “in our theological DNA” as Anabaptists. I suppose the comment was meant to communicate that the stream of the Christian tradition from which we emerged has had a specific take on what discipleship looks like and that those of us who trace our lineage to the Anabaptist tradition are theologically hard-wired to embrace certain things. It’s almost as if we can’t help ourselves. Or can we? Read more
Before Rob Bell went and wrote a book about heaven and hell, thereby ensuring his status as “lightning rod for criticism and heresy charges for the foreseeable future,” Brian McLaren was often the most frequent target of abuse for angry Christians. Ever since A New Kind of Christian was published in 2001, McLaren has been a polarizing figure in parts of the Christian world. Read more
It is an odd thing, I have discovered during my nearly three years as a pastor, to be entrusted with people’s pain.
It’s not an everyday occurrence, but today pain came calling. Two conversations with two people, both carrying crippling burdens of hurt and despair, sorrow and longing, both dealing with the complex cocktails of physical, spiritual, mental, and relational pain that characterize so many lives, both searching desperately for a word of hope, comfort, or encouragement. Read more
May 10
One of the highlights of any trip back to Regent College is the opportunity to snoop around their excellent bookstore. It’s always difficult to avoid spending much more money than I have, but I often emerge with a handful of good books to keep me going for a while. This year, one of titles I came away with was Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World. Read more
May 2
The conversation taking place on my previous post—specifically the comment referring to open theism—has got me thinking about some of my writing and reflection I did on the topic during my university days. I spent an entire undergraduate thesis under the supervision of a self-described “atheistic Jew who is angry with God” advocating open theism as a response to the problem of evil. Read more
Last night, we had a drama group performing at our church (unenviably, on the same night as game seven of the Canucks/Blackhawks series!). Through a series of sketches, the group skillfully and humorously walked us through the basic contours of the biblical narrative—creation, fall, redemption—climaxing, of course, with the resurrection and the hope of new creation. One of the ideas that stood out to me during the dialogue in an early scene which depicted God deliberating with one of his angels about what and how to create, was that in creating human beings, God took a risk. Read more
Over the last couple of years, my kids have periodically asked some variation of this question: “Who made God?” Usually, in response to their queries, I have stumbled and bumbled my way to an unnecessarily complex and probably not entirely satisfactory explanation of divine aseity (well, I don’t use the word, necessarily). Come to think of it, my explanations almost certainly aren’t satisfactory because the question seems to keep popping up. Read more
[T]he proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all is not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream.
Christ our Lord has risen.
Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Apr 19
This morning I came across an interesting lecture over at TED Talks by journalist, author, and “wrongologist” (apparently there is such a thing!) Kathryn Schulz called “On Being Wrong.” If you’ve got 18 minutes to spare, it’s well worth checking out. Read more
One of the benefits of having a blog is that, aside from feeding your ego through the ordinary rhythm of writing about whatever you want whenever you want and plastering it all over the internet, you can use it to draw attention to yourself at any and every other convenient opportunity as well :). Like, say, when an article of yours is published. Read more
Every Wednesday in my neck of the woods, a handful of guys get together to talk and pray about God, life, work, marriage, and whatever else happens to come up before breakfast. One member of our group is a lawyer, and today we got on to the topic of justice and the irregular and inconsistent nature of its application in the Canadian system. To cite just one example (among a handful we talked about), there were back to back court cases where hunting an animal out of season resulted in a (much) more severe punishment than a clear cut case of spousal abuse. Amazing. Read more
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| The Helpers of Rahab… on Ellipsis | |
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| inquisitivelypinkcd4… on The Irrelevant Moral Stra… |
