Oct 14
I have never liked hospitals. Hospitals can so often seem to be places where we attempt to sequester the pain and confusion and despair that are a part of so many lives—to keep them out of sight and out of mind. When we go to the hospital, we look in a mirror and we see ourselves in 5, 10, 20, 50 years—it doesn’t really matter how long. The question isn’t if but when we will take our place amongst all of these broken down worn out decaying bodies. Read more
Most of today was spent at a workshop on “Servant Leadership” put on by the local Good Samaritan Society. It was a good day of reflection and learning—a welcome and necessary break from the routine. The speaker began by reading a poem called “Accepting This” by Mark Nepo, taken from a book Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead. Read more
One of the questions I have come to dread over the years is the “so what do you do for a living?” question. It’s not that I am ashamed to be a pastor, it’s simply that very often the discovery that I am “religious” can be something of a conversation-stopper. Pastors are strange creatures, to be sure, and many people seem unclear about what to do when encountering one outside of their natural habitats (i.e., a church). At the very least, disclosing that I am a pastor often makes the conversation instantly stranger, as people either a) hastily and awkwardly change the topic; b) begin to laboriously and not altogether coherently demonstrate how they are religious too; c) explain why they don’t go to church anymore; or d) stop talking altogether. Read more
Like most people, I was saddened to hear of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday. I am certainly no technophile (although I do love my MacBook) and my knowledge of the world in which Mr. Jobs was so influential is minimal, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, based on the little I do know, I marvel at the impact this man and the company he founded have had upon how we live in the modern world. It seemed like Jobs was not only a visionary leader but a genuinely decent human being. Not a bad combination. Read more
On the drive in to work today, the radio airwaves were abuzz with conversation about “Occupy Wall Street”—a series of demonstrations in New York City against the economic inequities created/sustained by the global financial system. Too many resources in the hands of too few, too much greed and corruption, too much abuse of power, etc, etc. The voices on the radio were full of passion, moral outrage, and conviction that this movement was the beginning of “something big.” Read more
It is not at all uncommon to hear some variation of the story that 18-30 year olds are one of the most under-represented groups in the church today. It seems that young adults are fleeing the church as soon as they leave high school, and only starting to trickle back once they have their own children, if they make their way back at all. While some of the reasons for this are undoubtedly related to the general transience of this age demographic, it’s a worrying trend that has been and continues to be the subject of exhaustive analysis. Read more
This past weekend was one of almost unbearably stark contrasts.
Friday and Saturday were spent with a few of our church’s young people at a high-octane youth conference put on by one of the larger churches in our area. Climbing walls, go-kart tracks, paintball, ear splitting rock concerts, dodge-ball, team games, sleepovers on a church floor, etc, all in the company of hundreds of screaming teenagers—this is how I spent a good deal of Friday and Saturday. Not the most natural of contexts for me, I suppose, but it was great to have some fun with the kids and get to know them better.
And then, as we were finishing up our breakfast on Saturday morning and getting ready to head back to the conference for round two, a phone call came. Read more
God’s self-giving goodness and his determined commitment to rescue and redeem his creation were demonstrated two thousand years ago on a Roman cross. This is the guiding conviction that animates Mark Baker and Joel Green’s exploration of the meaning and scope of the atonement in the second edition of Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts. Read more
I’m in the midst of a very busy stretch right now, so there’s not a lot of time for original posts. This morning, however, in the midst of my busyness, I came across a few prescient quotes from Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing on the struggles we often have with paying attention to and nourishing our spiritual lives. Rolheiser identifies three main things that work against what he calls a sense of “interiority,” and all three seem to pretty much hit the nail on the head: narcissism, pragmatism, and unbridled restlessness. Here’s a bit of what I read prior to heading out into another busy (!) day: Read more
There is much about how religion and Christianity are understood and publicly discussed in our post-Christian Canadian context that produces a mixture of bemusement and genuine puzzlement for me. This week’s entry in the “head scratcher” category comes via an article from Wednesday’s Globe and Mail by Kate Soles that tells the story of her process of decision-making on the issue of whether or not to get her baby baptized. Read more
I was at a meeting with some pastors and other leaders in our community today, and one of the things that was on the agenda before lunch was “worship.” And so, as we waited for our lunch to appear, a guitar was pulled out, and a few songs were sung around a board room table with great enthusiasm. One of the songs we sang was one that I gather is a fairly popular one in evangelical churches these days—Chris Tomlin’s “Our God.” Read more
One of the things that we most desperately crave as human beings is meaning. We want our own individual lives to be meaningful, and we want our lives to somehow fit into some larger narrative of drama and purpose. We want our brief moments on this cosmic rock to matter. Read more
There have been many words flying around this week leading up to today’s tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack, and there will undoubtedly be many more throughout the day today. I have not read many better than these, by Bishop William Willimon, from an article in Christianity Today about how evangelical leaders have changed since 9/11: Read more
Blogging can be a bit of a strange animal in that you hurl your words out into the wide (and wild) world of the web, where they can be read (or not) by a virtually limitless variety of people who come to them from a virtually limitless assortment of links, searches, recommendations, “likes,” etc. Of course, on one level this is no different from the publishing of books and articles. But the sheer volume of words out there in cyberspace makes it easy to imagine one’s own words just getting lost in the noise and clutter of the online world. Read more
Do we love God for who he is or for what he can do for us? This is one of the central themes that runs throughout Skye Jethani’s recent book, With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God. The book examines some of the ways in which we tend to relate to God, diagnosing some problematic and unhelpful tendencies, and arguing for a mature commitment to live and walk with God for his own sake, rather than for the advantages we can secure or as a strategy for coping with the fear and unpredictability of life. Read more
One of the unfortunate features of the blogging world is that many interesting posts/discussions disappear into cyber-oblivion as soon as new content replaces them on the front page. To address this lamentable reality, I have thus decided that from time to time I will drag out the odd blog post from the basement (my own, or someone else’s) and give it the opportunity for another look, another round of conversation. Read more
A fairly healthy number of my academic pursuits over the years have been devoted to some form or another of apologetics—a rational “defense” of the faith, whatever that might mean. Indeed, a quick glance at my blog archives yields a similar conclusion. So many words spent clarifying, unpacking, rephrasing, rehabilitating, or somehow defending God or belief in God or Christian practice in a post-Christian context. So many hours devoted to abstract ideas, theological constructs, “metanarratives,” worldviews, and “plausibility structures” within which to locate or give expression to Christian belief. So many pages about what I see to be the inadequacies of modern atheism. My attitude toward the general project of apologetics has undoubtedly changed and (hopefully) deepened over time, but I have always been inclined toward logic and reason and arguments and making some kind of rational sense of faith. Read more
I walk out of a downtown cafe and the usual sights present themselves: a group of tattooed teenagers with wild hair alternating attention between their smart phones and one another; a few black-clad Hutterites in town for the day to shop; a couple of businessmen rushing importantly off to their next meeting; a few university students out on the patio, enjoying the last few days before classes start. It’s a beautiful day, and there’s life all around. Read more
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Rumblings 