Year: 2012

This Sunday, we will begin a series on Galatians.  During the summer months we will be slowly and carefully working our way through The Letter of Paul to theGalatians.  The Apostle Paul wrote this letter about 2,000 years ago. What do you know about the Apostle Paul?  According to the Book of Acts he oversaw the stoning […]

I ended today’s sermon (which was kinda like a college lecture hall…please forgive me as I learn to “preach” rather than regurgitate knowledge) with a quote from a book that has radically changed my understanding of Jesus’ saving work on the cross, and is a perfect image of “Option #3.” Dr. Andrew Sung Park writes, […]

Hanging out with the boys, God throws a few more cubes of ice in his whiskey. He takes a sip, makes that squinty face we all make from the bite of a good whiskey, and looks the Devil in the eyes. He takes a dramatic pause but before he can utter a word, the Holy […]

You have a problem. You’re a sinner. Sin separates you from God and God requires you pay the debt you owe to God. You’re in luck: Jesus paid that death-debt for you. That’s what I grew up with, and that’s what I want to leave behind. It’s when hearing this that I begin to ask, […]

This Sunday I will offer 3 different ways of understanding the death of Jesus on the cross (the atonement). Often in church-world, the non-super-nerdy folk don’t ever give second thought to Jesus’ death – it’s simply agreed upon that Jesus died “to save us from our sins.” But as my fraternity brothers would say, “it aint that […]

This past Sunday was a rough morning; I didn’t get much sleep because of the ASF conference and felt like I had just run a marathon. Tired as can be, I let the computer help ease my morning drudge, and as I sat in a trance fixing the slide show Randy walked in the front […]

In preparation for our upcoming conference, A Sustainable Faith, I will be blogging through the theme of the event, “ecology, incarnation and the interconnectedness of all.”  It’s going to be an amazing conversation with some awesome thinkers, authors, pastors, professors, friends and activists. A few highlights: Andy Bell – The Psychological and Spiritual Impacts of Climate Change: How […]

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus ate with a bunch of working class fishermen, social misfits and so called “friends” – who would soon royally screw him over. In the traditions surrounding Maundy Thursday we sometimes miss the awkwardness that was thick in the room, and I don’t just mean the motley crew. Let’s be real, when’s the last […]

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral; begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder […]

Many of you have asked if I could post the Benediction that we used this past Sunday.  Here it is: A Franciscan Benediction May God bless us with discomfortAt easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationshipsSo that we may live from deep within our hearts. May God bless us with angerAt injustice, oppression, and exploitation of […]