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Posts from the ‘Faith’ Category

Mar 2

23 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist

Perhaps surprisingly, despite the fact that I earn my living at a Mennonite church, very little of my formal education was devoted to learning about Anabaptist history and theology. I took one year of Bible College at a Mennonite school when I was 19, but that was about it. I studied philosophy at university and deliberately chose to pursue graduate studies at an inter/trans-denominational institution. I received bits and pieces of the Anabaptist story along the way in my studies, I read the occasional book by a Mennonite author, and I almost always worshiped in Anabaptist churches so it wasn’t like I was clueless. But I’ve never exactly swam in the deep end of the Anabaptist pool. Read more

Feb 23

1 Comment

Exile

I read very few novels during the six years I was in formal studies—there was too much required reading for my courses and, when combined with the ordinary demands of small kids and everyday life, there wasn’t much time (or energy!) left for reading fiction. One of the joys of seeing my university and grad school days receding in the mirror has been the ability to start reading novels again. It’s nice to be able to read a book without the expectation of evaluating it and demonstrating comprehension looming large in the background. Read more

Feb 22

1 Comment

Watchers

The mail today contained a letter informing me that as an alumni of Regent College I am to receive a year’s free subscription to Crux—the quarterly journal of Christian thought and opinion they publish.  Things seem to be running a little behind with this publication (as you will see, if you visit the website), but it was a delightful surprise, nonetheless, to receive a few back issues.  This poem is from the Summer 2009 issue: Read more

Feb 16

3 Comments

Rapt for Lent

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday tomorrow, and over the last week I have been overhearing the customary discussions about who is giving up what for the period of pre-Easter preparation. I have given up things for Lent in the past and have occasionally even found the process to have the effect of sharpening my focus and preparing me for Easter.  But more often than not, it has degenerated into somewhat of a duty that, while undertaken with the best of intentions, fizzled out well before Good Friday arrived. Read more

Feb 8

8 Comments

A Ragged Garment

Last night I was talking with a group of young adults about things like doubt and honesty and childlike-ness and the role these things (and others) played in the development and preservation of a mature faith.  Frederick Buechner, in a discussion of one of his former professors, has this to say in Listening to Your Life: Read more

Feb 5

40 Comments

Living With the Bible

I’m always curious to observe how people view the Bible, both inside and outside of the church. There are often very interesting assumptions at work about what it means to “take the Bible seriously” or about how Christians view (or ought to view) the Bible. Everyone thinks they have a good understanding of what it means to “believe in the Bible” (or, more often to disbelieve in the Bible) whether this understanding comes from inside or outside of the Christian fold. Read more

Jan 30

7 Comments

Home

I’ve had the opportunity to travel back to my hometown in southern Alberta twice over the last month or so, once for a late Christmas and once for a funeral. A small town on the prairies was home for virtually all of my first thirty years until we left four and a half years ago to begin graduate studies in Vancouver. Going back always feels good and often leads to interesting times of reflection. Read more

Jan 22

22 Comments

Prayer: You Place a Reservoir Within My Heart

Perhaps surprisingly, given my occupation and the fact that one of my main (and most rewarding) tasks on any given Sunday is leading our congregation in prayer, I often find prayer difficult. The reasons for this vary. Sometimes I am paralyzed by the relative insignificance of my own needs when compared by the suffering others are facing (this week has been an especially difficult one for prayer, given the situation in Haiti). Sometimes I don’t know what to pray for. Sometimes I don’t know what prayer accomplishes—in my own life and character and for those I pray for. Sometimes I am simply lazy and undisciplined. Sometimes the silence of heaven wearies me. Read more

Jan 12

1 Comment

To Become a See-er

One of the blogs I have come to deeply appreciate over the last little while is that of Winnipeg singer/songwriter Steve Bell.  Steve is an enormously talented human being whose music I have admired for some time and who I have gone to see in concert whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself (most recently, I saw him perform at Regent College last September).  I began following Steve’s blog last year and have discovered that his talents are many and diverse!  Not surprisingly—he is, after all, a songwriter—Steve has a way with words and his posts often leave me with much to ponder. Read more

Jan 11

46 Comments

A Religious Response

Some of the toughest questions I have been asked as a pastor are some variation of the following: Why is God allowing this to happen to me?  The life situations that prompt these questions can range (and have ranged) from the relatively insignificant to the profoundly traumatic and unsettling, but the brute existential fact underlying life on this planet is that things do not always—or even often—go as we want them to.  If one chooses to believe that a good God presides over a world that so frequently and sometimes agonizingly frustrates even the most basic human desires and aspirations, the questions of theodicy become even more acute.  If God is in control and he’s supposed to be so good, why all this misery?  Why any misery for that matter? Read more

Dec 15

12 Comments

On Empathy and Exclusivity

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

Dec 9

64 Comments

Making the Best of It (and a Short Story)

While we’re on the topic of Christianity and culture/how to engage those who think differently than us in a pluralistic postmodern world (and while I remain in shameless self-promotion mode), I noticed yesterday that Direction (an MB publication that describes itself as somewhere between an academic journal and a denominational magazine) has just made their Spring 2009 issue available online—an issue that contains my review of John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Read more

Dec 8

19 Comments

Transforming Christian Theology: Conclusion

The fourth and final entry in my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one, two, and three). Read more

Dec 3

4 Comments

Waiting

Advent is about waiting for the God who comes. There is no more central conviction to the Christian faith that we worship and follow a God who has come, who continues to come, and who will come. At the same time, there is probably also no more central experience to a life of following Christ in the in-between time—the time between his first and second Advents—than waiting.  Christ has come. Christ is coming. But still, we wait. Read more

Nov 30

38 Comments

Transforming Christian Theology: Part Three

On to part three of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one and two here and here). Read more

Nov 23

18 Comments

Transforming Christian Theology: Part Two

On to part two of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (part one here). Read more

Nov 19

17 Comments

All Together

Around here, Thursdays are the day where a good deal of the work of preparing the Sunday morning service begins. I am always amazed to see the sheer diversity of the people who come through our doors on any given Sunday. I am equally amazed to discover the potpourri of needs, hopes, joys, fears, longings, frustrations, and anxieties that accompany them. Of course it is impossible to craft a service with the specific intention of meeting every perceived or real individual need that might show up on a Sunday morning. Yet one of the mysteries of the church is that when we gather together somehow our individual stories can find their place within the broader story of God and the story of his church—that by simply being together to pray, to sing, to hear from Scripture, and to share our lives, our needs just might end up getting met (however oddly or unexpectedly) along the way. Read more

Nov 13

47 Comments

Man of God

From a recent journal entry.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:3-5

The call comes—someone’s looking for a priest. Of course, you’re not a priest but you’re close enough. There’s been some trouble and someone wants to talk to a “holy man.” They want a man of God to come. Read more

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