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Jul 23

15 Comments

The Warranty

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

Jul 22

14 Comments

On Conversion

Today, a friend passed along a couple of sourceless yet memorable quotes about conversion and the idea that being a Christian is about Jesus being our “personal” saviour (I’ve reflected a bit on the language of “personal relationships” with Jesus before here). Given that Mennonite Brethren issues have been on the menu here over the last little while, and given that the early MB’s were very interested (perhaps at little too interested?) with issues of personal conversion and assurance of salvation, I thought these would be worth passing along: Read more

Jul 18

22 Comments

Family Matters II: Some Reflections on Celebration 2010

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

Jul 15

Family Matters

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

Jul 9

8 Comments

So Here I Am, Not Being Entertained!

My wife and I recently decided to cancel our cable TV. There were a variety of reasons for this, some principled, some just plain old pragmatic (we don’t watch much, and we can’t afford it). I thought that we would still pick up the odd station even after we got rid of cable, but it turns out that we now get precisely zero channels.  ZERO.  It’s very strange. I have been watching CBC’s coverage of the World Cup on my laptop, so I am surviving thus far, but I wonder what will happen once fall rolls around and hockey season starts. My resolve will certainly be tested…

Anyway, given my new television-less reality, I got a kick out of this when it came through the inbox the other day (Calvin’s family has just had their television stolen).

Jul 7

33 Comments

Great Expectations

Well, I’ve spent the last three or so days driving to Alberta and back and consequently have had little time for blogging. I have, however, managed to squeeze a bit of reading in here and there on my travels, and as always the odd quote seems to leap off the page and lodge itself in my brain. Here’s an intriguing one from Samir Selmanovic’s confused, confusing, and mostly forgettable foray into religious pluralism but not really religious pluralism called It’s Really All About God:

Faith is an exercise in having high expectations of God.

Thoughts?

Jul 3

God and the App Wars

On the off-chance that anyone out there is looking for further evidence that our cultural discourse is being seriously degraded and trivialized by the proliferation of technology, an article in yesterday’s New York Times alerted readers to the availability of iPhone apps to help believers and non believers arm themselves for war.  There are anti-Darwin apps for Christians, “Bible Thumper” apps for atheists, and others, no doubt, each doing what all apps are designed to do: provide entertainment, “illumination,” and diversion as quickly, and with as little demand to think for oneself, as possible. Read more

Jul 2

5 Comments

Beautiful… as Long as You Like Soccer

Over the last few weeks, my morning routine has involved waking up, tiptoeing down the hallway to avoid waking everyone else up, putting the coffee on, and catching a World Cup match before work. It has been delightful, and I am already dreading the end of South Africa 2010. This morning’s game (a 2-1 win by the Netherlands over mighty Brazil) had it all—colour, drama, suspense, amazing skill, some great goals, a bit of nastiness, and the right result! I can’t wait for the other three quarterfinal matches today and tomorrow. Read more

Jun 29

27 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 7: People of Peace

Well, what I originally intended to be a relatively brief blog series has turned out to be a three-month odyssey of procrastination, but we have finally arrived at the seventh and final of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more

Jun 24

24 Comments

Psalm 125: You Enfold Your People

I am in the middle of preparing a sermon on Psalm 125 for this Sunday. Psalm 125 is part of the Psalms of Ascent, songs that the Israelites would sing on their yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the holy festivals. It is a psalm that celebrates the God who “surrounds” his people, the God in whom security and goodness are found. Just as the mountains wrap around the city of Jerusalem, giving it security and strength, so the Lord is all around his people. It is a Psalm of confidence, security, and hope. Read more

Jun 23

12 Comments

Do You Wish to Report This Error?

Due to my constant whining and complaining about the ubiquity of Facebook and Twitter and whatever other social networking phenomenon is currently dominating and distracting us, I am becoming known as something of a Luddite around the office here.  Which is why this little video found its way into my inbox today. Read more

Jun 18

11 Comments

Searching for God Knows What

Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more

Jun 14

32 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 6: Justice

Well, I am moving at a downright glacial pace to the conclusion of my series on Stuart Murray’s The Naked Anabaptist. If anyone’s still following along, I’m on to the the sixth of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists: Read more

Jun 11

17 Comments

The Love That Greets Us on the Way

I’ve spent a bit of time ferrying back and forth to the mainland this week which has given me the chance to finally dive into Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. This is my first exposure to Lamott, but those who have read her will know that she comes up with some fairly memorable (and sometimes deliciously irreverent!) lines. I came across this one sometime around 1:00 am on the ferry last night:

Grace… is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

Jun 8

24 Comments

The Hole in Our Gospel: Review

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

Jun 7

18 Comments

Are We Worth the Trouble?

Any piece with a title like “Should This Be the Last Generation?” is bound to provoke a bit of curiosity, especially when the famous misanthrope Peter Singer is discovered to be its author. Today, the issue on Singer’s mind is whether or not human beings should consider ceasing to reproduce as an ethical response to our predicament, whether from the perspective of ecological responsibility (i.e., human beings are bad for the planet, therefore less of us are better than more) or based on more existential concerns (every child born will suffer, and we have a duty to prevent suffering). Read more

Jun 2

28 Comments

Only Two Scenarios?

It seems like every time I walk into a bookstore these days there are a handful of new books on the shelf, confidently explaining how science has shown this or that religious understanding of the world to be unfounded, misguided, false, naive, etc. The obvious response to such claims—and one that is frequently made—is to question just how it is that science could “prove” or disprove anything about an overall worldview within which science is located.   Read more

Jun 1

4 Comments

The Psalms Sing With Us

This past weekend we made the trip down the island to visit Sidney Booktown. We had heard from a number of people over the last two years that this was a necessary outing for newcomers to Vancouver Island, so we finally decided to check it out. Despite the cloudy, cool conditions, it was a great way to spend the afternoon. Sidney is a delightful little seaside town with a whole bunch of really cool bookstores and coffee shops. If it wasn’t for a couple of eight year-olds whose tolerance for leisurely bookstore browsing has limits, I could have spent all day there! Read more

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