As I continue to prepare my sermon for tomorrow’s worship - it’s Pentecost Sunday! - I seem to have a lot of different ideas swirling through my head. So I thought I would share them with you. Welcome to the chaos that is my brain function! 1. First of all there’s the scripture for the …
Category: Christianity
New math: With > 2 & 4
I am an American Baptist. I grew up attending an American Baptist church and I am ordained by the American Baptist Churches USA. However (and oddly), I’ve spent the last 15+ years serving as one of the pastors of the Woodridge United Methodist Church. As The United Methodist Church is about ten times bigger than …
What do teens think about bin Laden?
God's love extends even into the place we think is, by definition, the absence of God. Over the last two weeks, the responses to the news that Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden have been legion. As have been the tone of those responses. In all that I have read, this post by Eugene Cho …
Mighty Waters
Greetings from warm and sunny Pasadena, California! I am here for a conference called Mighty Waters: Preaching and Living God’s Passion for Justice. If you know me at all, you can probably already tell why I was drawn to this gathering. I’m all about striving to understand ourselves as called to live in – to …
Finding a new leadoff hitter
During our worship services this Easter Sunday, I got to read the lesson from Acts 10. I added a little prologue because the prescribed reading from the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) begins in the middle of the story. It's a story that's too good, too important to skip over. In fact, I argue that it …
Sunday’s coming
It's Saturday night. That means you've made it through Maundy (Holy) Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. For us pastor types it also means it will soon be time to share cogent, coherent thoughts in the form of an Easter Sunday sermon! That's the mounting pressure, anxiety-inducing meaning of "Sunday's coming." If you're still figuring …
It’s been a Good Friday
Since the blogosphere is overrun with people reflecting on their journey of faith in Christ (most of whom are way better at it than I), it should come as no surprise that posts on the meaning of Good Friday abound. Here are some that I found meaningful and thought-provoking: 1. My friend Adam Ericksen offers …
Some Christians walked into a temple, a mosque and a synagogue…
Last week I had the privilege of accompanying four of my church's Confirmands on the Northern IL Conference Bishop’s Interfaith Youth Bus Tour. We were part of a group of more than 70 teenagers from across the Conference who visited a Hindu temple (which I learned is called a Mandir), a Muslim mosque and a …
Continue reading Some Christians walked into a temple, a mosque and a synagogue…
Bizarro Shaggy and Scooby?
I hope you'll forgive the continuing shameless self-promotion... I'm pleased to be a part of the fun, interesting, good work going on at The Hardest Question, the blog that seeks to: move Bible preachers and teachers creatively away from hermeneutical cliché, so as to ignite both weekly preparations and insightful conversations for the sake of …
It’s Sunday, but Sunday’s comin’
As a follower of God in the way of Jesus, today is Palm Sunday. And it's Passion Sunday. Which, at my church, meant it was Palm/Passion Sunday. We're just all hip mashup like that. Today marks the beginning of what we call Holy Week. That is, the week leading up to Easter. Today we remembered …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 