Latest posts
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Earnest Isn’t Enough
I don’t know how it is for everyone else, but there are books that stick with me in a way that I find I am returning back to their ideas over and over again years after I’ve read it. One of those books for me is ‘The Civil War as a Theological Crisis’ by Mark…
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Violence is bad, actually
Every now and again I’ll come across and article or a book that becomes an apocalypse for me, in the sense that it reveals something, a paradigm or a cultural phenomenon, and the world around me makes a little more sense. Terry Gross’s interview of Quentin Tarantino on Fresh Air was one of those moments…
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Honest Apologetics
In the introduction to Jesus through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan writes: “For each age, the life and teachings of Jesus represented an answer (or, more often the answer) to the most fundamental questions of human existence and of human destiny, and it was to the figure of Jesus as set forth in the Gospels that…
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Youth Ministry White Paper
Adolescence is life’s internship. It’s when people learn about who they really are, where they belong, and where they can effect change in the world around them. Inviting adolescents into a life of discipleship takse place when we come alongside them as they go through that liminal space between childhood and adulthood. This happens by…
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How I changed my mind on women’s ordination
In April of 2005, during my sophomore year at Moody Bible Institute, I wrote a paper entitled: “Female Authority in the Church: a hermeneutical(sic) Look at 1 Timothy 2:11-12.” It was the first time I dug into passages in the New Testament about women in church leadership, and it was the formation of a position…
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My Love Letter to Revoice
Revoicees (Revoicers? Revoicians?) I chose to come to Revoice this year to learn. I’m a straight, married pastor who wanted to hear from and better understand my gay brothers and sisters. I wanted to learn how I can be a better pastor to sexual minorities, and I expected to leave the conference with all kinds…
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Question 2 of 9
I’m slowly working through my friend Scott’s “Questions to pose to a candidate being asked to serve as an elder in a local church.” Here is his second question: Tell me about five websites that you regularly visit in an average week. Why do you visit these sites? Here are the sites that I follow…
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10 Questions
A friend of mine, who has spent more than his fair share of time having to wrestle with the expectations we ought to have for church leadership (and what to do when leaders fail), posted ten questions he would ask of anyone who asipres to lead in a church. I found them to be pretty…
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Adolescence is not new
I’m a little over a decade into my career working with 6th-12th graders. In those years, I’ve come across the following idea in a variety of places, whether from youth ministry professionals, education advocates, or random think pieces about “this generation.” The statement will be something like this: adolescence as a life stage is a…
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A Tale of Two Marches
(Also Posted on Christianity Today’s website on March 26th) (I have to note that what I’m writing is my own opinion, not the position of any institution with which I am affiliated. Anyone who knows anything about institutions with which I am affiliated should find this to be obvious, given the diversity of opinions in…