Category: Uncategorized

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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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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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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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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(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…

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The very first Sunday School series I taught upon becoming a youth pastor was through the book of Judges, and ever since then if you are one of my students, a parent of a student, or anyone else who has simply been in the right (wrong?) place at the right time, you’ve heard my rant…

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If you are around conservatives enough, you‘ll often hear some variation on this theme: The family is the building block of society. Or, in religious circles you might hear that the family (by this we mean the nuclear family of mother, father, and children) is like a little church. It comes up in politics, in…

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In Ohio public schools (at least in the late 90s), there were a series of tests you had to pass at the end of the Eighth grade. I wasn’t worried about showing competency in math or English, but I was worried about social studies, or as the test was called: “citizenship.” I had just moved…

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I can’t do a good job of assessing how national policies that isolate our country from the rest of the world will affect our economy, safety, or general prosperity. I have opinions on them, but it’s not my area of expertise. I can make an argument for what that kind of a mentality looks like…

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In the last few days, my social media feeds are filled with sadness, anxiety, and fear. And one of the most common responses I see to the grief or in response to the grieving that many are going through after Trump’s election sounds something like this: Don’t worry. Trump isn’t even president until January. And…

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