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Posts from the ‘Pastoral Ministry’ Category

Nov 15

9 Comments

How Dare You Speak of Grace?

I spent a good chunk of this week at a denominational pastors retreat in the Alberta foothills just north of Calgary. One of the things we did during our worship times each day was spend some time “dwelling in the Word.” The specific text we focused on each session was Luke 7:36-50, the story where Jesus is anointed by a “sinful woman” at the home of Simon the Pharisee. It’s a scandalous story—a woman of ill repute showing up a bunch of religious elites, crashing their party with her sensuous, inappropriate display of penitence, love, and devotion. Even more scandalously, Jesus praises her as an example to emulate, claims to forgive her sin, and sends her away in peace. One can only imagine what must have been going on in the minds of the esteemed, religious host and his respectable dinner guests! Read more

Nov 10

6 Comments

Hope for a World of Lost Horizons

Nearly every Saturday afternoon/evening finds me furiously editing, rewriting, rearranging, hating and hacking out parts of a sermon manuscript that has inevitably grown rather bloated over the course of the week. The longer I do this preaching thing, the more I am convinced that short sermons are far more difficult to write than long ones! It’s relatively easy for me to ramble on (as readers of this blog are no doubt aware!); it’s much harder to keep things concise and, if necessary, to get rid of stuff that I am quite (humbly) convinced is rather eloquent,  insightful, and necessary. Such is the cross I bear. Read more

Nov 6

31 Comments

Placebos, Politics, and Prayer

Today is election day south of the border. I have been trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to follow this over the last few months and am glad that after tonight I will be relieved of this (imagined) burden. I confess that I find the whole business so spectacularly boring and predictable. Two rich men squabbling over power, spending obscene amounts of other people’s money to sell themselves back to these same people. It’s the same story every four years or so: we have laughably impossible rhetoric about “hope” and “change” and “rebuilding America” combined with the inevitable sloganeering and nasty attacks on the other guy’s character and intentions…. Yawn. Wake me up when it’s over. Read more

Oct 24

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The Power of All: Book Review

Over the past two thousand or so years the Christian church has consistently, in its worship, its leadership structures, its pedagogy, and its general ethos, deviated from the spirit and intent of the community Christ envisioned. Rather than becoming a community of believers gifted and called to participate together in the ongoing task of becoming disciples of Jesus in life and worship, the church has become an institution maintained by professionals. There have been exceptions along the way, to be sure, and of course God has seen fit to work with and through the church with all of its errors, but the general trend throughout most of church history has been to move away from multivoiced communities of active participants toward mono-voiced institutions filled with passive consumers. It is time for this trend to change. This is the provocative thesis of Sian and Stuart Murray Williams in their book The Power of All: Building a Multivoiced Church. Read more

Sep 29

The Long View

Amidst the many astonishingly trivial deliverances of the Facebook news feed, the odd gem comes through now and then as well. Like this prayer I came across this morning. It has been attributed by many to Oscar Romero, the famously martyred archbishop of El Salvador, although evidently it is far from clear that Romero ever wrote or spoke these words. Bishop Ken Untener is believed to be the prayer’s actual author, composing it in 1979, and apparently it was Cardinal John Dearden who delivered it as part of a homily for departed priests (like Romero). Confused yet? Me too. Read more

Sep 11

“There’s No Such Thing as an Uninteresting Life”

Every Tuesday morning, a group of older gentlemen—anywhere from 5-15 guys, some from our church, others from another local Mennonite church—gather for coffee and conversation at the coffee shop across the street. The topics vary. Politics, history, current events (yesterday’s wildfires near Lethbridge, for example!), family, and, yes, church—any or all of these and more could find their way into the discussion on a typical Tuesday. Read more

Sep 3

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To Be Continued…

This year, our family spent Labour Day weekend about an hour and a half northwest of Calgary at Camp Evergreen  where I was speaking at the camp’s fall family retreat. This was the camp I grew up attending as a boy, and it was great to see our kids get to enjoy the same activities—archery, horseback riding, and canoeing—that I enjoyed once upon a time, as well as try out a few that weren’t around way back when I was there (the zip-line and the climbing wall were highlights). Many things had changed (apparently that happens over 20+ years!), but it was still great to be back. Read more

Aug 27

14 Comments

Difference as Essence

It is not at all uncommon for me, as a pastor, to encounter some variation of the question, “So, what’s the deal with all the different denominations in Christianity? Why can’t you all agree on anything?!” Read more

Jul 31

14 Comments

On “Stomaching” the Bible

There are a handful of topics and themes that I can fairly reliably count on to cause questions or concerns in the life of the church. Near the top of the list would be questions about the Bible. What about all of the problem texts of violence and misogyny? What about the history of canonization—which books got in, which were left out, and why? Which parts are “historical” and which are “symbolic” or “metaphorical?” What about all of those long, boring, irrelevant lists of sacrificial rituals and antiquated, bewildering legal codes? Why, in short, do we have such a messy, complicated, difficult book to deal with instead of a book that conforms to our expectations of what an “inspired” text ought to look like? Read more

Jul 11

3 Comments

On Denominations and Open Doors

One of the highlights of our last week and a half or so in Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island has been the opportunity to reconnect with some of the many good friends we made during our six years out here. Aside from the irritation of fighting a cold almost from the moment our holiday started, it has been a great time filled with great conversations and great people. Read more

May 24

6 Comments

You Say You Want a Revolution?

I’ve been a part of a number of interesting and often painful conversations over the last few days, many of which relate—directly or indirectly—to the problem of evil and whether or not there is a coherent way to think about and respond to this from a Christian perspective. These subjects of these conversations have covered a head-spinningly wide range—from  the reality of war and poverty to systemic injustices to painful realities of everyday life and relationships. In every conversation, old, old questions lurk in the shadows: “How can God allow this? How can I believe that God is good and loves his children in light of ____? What am I supposed to do, as a person of faith, in light of all this evil?” Read more

May 16

6 Comments

The Judge

Like most churches, we occasionally receive requests for money from people in our community. I suspect I am not alone when I say that I have come to dread these calls. It’s not that I don’t think that the church should help people in need, or that I resent the “intrusion” on my time or anything like that. I am simply growing increasingly uncomfortable with my role as the judge of the “worthiness” or “legitimacy” of this or that request for assistance.

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May 11

23 Comments

Vengeance is (Not) Mine

We have a tendency to want to create a God in our own image who we can then emulate.

These were the words of Perry Yoder, professor emeritus of the newly renamed Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, at a theological studies conference put on by Mennonite Church Alberta that I have been attending in Calgary over the past few days. We have been talking a lot about how we read the Bible—about the presuppositions that inform our interpretations, about how our various traditions dispose us toward certain possibilities, about what to do about seemingly irreconcilable texts, and myriad other issues around reading and understanding Scripture. Including, as the quote alludes to, the constant temptation to read Scripture with an eye toward the God we expect (or would prefer) to find.  Read more

May 9

9 Comments

“God Does Not Depend on You”

Over the course of the five years or so that I have been maintaining this blog, it has been interesting to observe which topics spark conversation and which do not. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that if there is one topic or theme that has tended to generate the most comments and/or traffic over the lifespan of this blog, it would be something related to doubt—whether the role doubt plays (or can play or ought to play) in the life of faith or the role doubt has played in the rejection of faith. Read more

Apr 6

21 Comments

Good Friday: For the Badness and the Sadness

What does this have to do with me? These were the decidedly impious words that kept rattling around my cranium as I drove around town running errands after a local Good Friday service this morning. It had been a meaningful service—beautiful music, considerable time spent hearing Scripture, a dramatic portrayal of Jesus’ betrayal, “trial,” and crucifixion—but for some reason, the events we remembered this morning seemed light years away from my own life and experience.

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Mar 13

32 Comments

Looking For a Priest in All the Wrong Places

Alain de Botton has been in the news a lot recently. His Religion for Atheists has garnered considerable attention, whether from atheists who think he is entirely too appreciative of religion or from religious folks who think he is rather selectively and inconsistently describing and accessing their traditions. In the last week alone, I’ve come across no fewer than ten reviews, articles, and interviews trying to make sense of his strange (to some) project of trying to take the best parts of religion and use them to construct a more meaningful secularism. Read more

Mar 7

1 Comment

Life

It’s mid-afternoon and it’s been one of those scattered, disjointed days.  Office equipment malfunctioning, the seemingly constant pinging of email, several conversations about how to do this or that better, and what the church ought to consider doing, and what a healthy church looks like, and not getting my sermon done, and thinking ahead to a funeral for a friend tomorrow, and how are we going to get the kids to their various activities tonight, and don’t forget to stop at the bank, and remember to call so-and-so about such-and such, and, and, and…. Read more

Feb 28

15 Comments

The Truth

Most Sundays, at around 11:30 am, I get up behind a sturdy wooden pulpit, take a deep breath, and speak the first of the two thousand words or so that comprise my sermon. Every time I do this, the irony that a big part of my vocation involves speaking—out loud!—strikes me. As someone who has always been shy, always struggled with stuttering and speaking too quickly, it is a strange and exhilarating and terrifying indeed to speak in front of other human beings on a regular basis. Jeremiah’s words of protest to God have always rung true for me: “Ah Lord God! Truly, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (Jer 1:6). And yet, I speak.  Read more

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