Month: March 2012

Things are coming together nicely for the Sustainable Faith Collective – our new college focused ministry here at Missio!  The Tampa and St. Petersburg college scene is missing something and it’s wearing down many searching for a faith that is inclusive, open-minded and justice oriented. We’re here to change that. We’re exploreing what it looks […]

This past Sunday I spoke on prayer. I talked about how one of the biggest reasons we don’t like praying is that we have no idea what God does with our prayers. I skimmed through three deeply theological ideas (which I’ll be blogging on in the near future) about God’s power and how our understanding […]

It’s important that we ask tough questions. In many of our faith traditions questions were not allowed. I mentioned on Sunday that I’ve been called a “daemon,” “untrustworthy,” and “a crazy liberal” all because I asked questions about my faith, questions that scare people. A question I often asked early on my journey was, “If […]

Saturday morning I woke up and I had my usual dose of anxiety. It sucks, but its real. I usually wake up with anxiety, and since I’ve moved to St. Pete I haven’t been able to find a doctor for my normal medicine. Like I said, it sucks. But I also woke up praying. I […]

Dr. John Cobb offers amazing insight into just about every theological areana. Here he is on prayer: “Jesus calls on us to give water to the thirsty. If a man asks for water that you could provide, and instead of giving it you pray for him, this prayer is not an expression of Christian piety. If instead […]

In the first “Prayer Redux” I mention that the form of prayer that many of us have been taught in the Christian community is straight up, miserable. I concluded that there’s got to be a better response to this idea of what prayer can be, and Barbra Brown Taylor seems to think so aswell with her […]

In our series on prayer, I figured it might make just a tiny bit of sense to actually post a prayer 🙂 Below is a beautiful prayer written by Ted Loder, his ability to draw on the reality of lifes messiness through linguistic awesomness is exactly what I needed this morning. Enjoy… How shall I […]

Here’s the thing, for a lot of us (including myself), if we stick to the popular version of prayer we’ve inherited from the 20th century, would rather show someone our bank statements than talk about our prayer life. I’d be more prone to talk about my struggle with my weight than confess I hate prayer. […]

Let’s be real, prayer is one of the biggest mysteries of the Christian faith. Yet in the mystery that prayer is, faithful Christians have practiced prayer for thousands of years. Just look at Tim Tebow and his token prayer after a good play…as if God somehow wants to let some football-millionaire score a touchdown over […]

Lent has historically been a time of repentance, contemplation, sacrifice, and abstention. In the early church the 40 days of Lent were a serious time of training. Candidates for baptism were taught prayer, they learned to fast, and studied the textual/oral tradition to best equip them to combat the deceptive powers in our world.  Lent […]