February 2012
2 posts
Unexpected Grace
God is at work through the most unlikely people. A helpful reminder for us self-important types.
First published at Out of Ur.
Some of the most important moments of faith do not come from the places we expect. They may not come from behind a pulpit or an altar, in corporate worship, or during a retreat. Those of us leading congregations are often tempted to think God works through us most....
“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily...”
– Lesslie Newbigin in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
January 2012
1 post
“I more and more find the precious part of each day to be the thirty or forty...”
– Lesslie Newbigin (via wesleyhill)
November 2011
1 post
Why All Saints' Day Matters →
Nov. 1 is more than the day after Halloween.
“If you find yourself thinking, ‘This sounds like a naive utopia,’ that’s OK. Because it is a utopia. It’s just not naive; it’s hopeful. All Saints’ Day is a time to remember—to embrace—what the Kingdom of God looks like (and what it will look like forever).”
October 2011
2 posts
WatchTrailer for Horse & Rider. Thank God for grace.
Sigh... Mark Driscoll
Mark Driscoll is a hero to some and a champion for the Wild at Heart kind of Christian man. He curses. He’s passionate. And he is considered to be prophetic voice speaking out against socially liberal Christians, like myself.
But in recent weeks, Mark Driscoll has been enduring a higher level of scrutiny. He has been the reoccurring subject of Christian Nightmares, a satirical blog...
August 2011
1 post
Rowan Williams on Sex →
The essay starts off a bit slow and brings you into a conversation that challenges biblical assumptions with the biblical witness and theological sophistication, but what I find fascinating are the comments. This essay was written 1989, is considered to be one of most important essays in the 20th century on sexuality, and people have little respect for it. I find it sad and a bit hilarious that...
July 2011
4 posts
“An evangelical is a plain, ordinary Christian.”
– John Stott, speaking to Christianity Today (via newbigin)
Grateful for the work and life of John Stott.
“The American Presbyterian writer Timothy Keller has recently published a book on...”
– Rowan Williams. (Indeed, it’s a great book about the great, good news.)
Some Thoughts on Dirt
Sermon Preached at All Angels’ Episcopal Church, New York, NY on July 10, 2011
Holy Father, help us be a people with ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to receive the words your Son has spoken. And as we make our way to the foreign land your Son inhabited so long ago, may his words rain down on us in such away where we will be renewed and refreshed. We pray these things in your name. ...
Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me.
→
Our top picks to fill your mind and your time this season
Currently reading Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me. So far I’ve cried twice. Ian Cron knows how to tell a story.
June 2011
3 posts
“Once God was incomprehensible and inaccessible, invisible and entirely...”
– St. Bernard of Clairvaux (via wesleyhill)
Why are We Surprised by Weinergate?
First Published at RELEVANT.
As if his name alone doesn’t cause seventh-grade boys to snicker, New York Representative Anthony Weiner has become the current, cheap political punchline. After sending lewd photos and maintaining inappropriate online relationships with several women, his indiscretions have been mocked on a variety of news outlets, from NPR to The Daily Show. And after a couple of...
Grieving for God
First Published at RELEVANT as a Easter Devotional.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11 NIV
HOLY WEEK IS one of those traditions that may only seem to have a market for theology students. For most, Easter means...
May 2011
4 posts
Is there anything more pretentious than owning a...
etceterawhatever:
Yes.
Yes, there is.
That’s right. Historian’s History of the World in 24 Volumes plus an Index. ridiculous!
“Where this sun shines and illumines the heart, there is found a true and certain...”
– Martin Luther, a sermon on the Gospel of John.
The Viceroy Trinity
An Introduction to the gods of Self-help, Free Markets and Moral Therapeutic Deism and Theologically Christian Responses Against It.
We have replaced the Triune God with a Viceroy Trinity. By this, I mean the connections between public life and religious life in the US have shifted in such way that American folk Christianity has been hijacked by a new trinity. This Viceroy Trinity, marked...
The Sermon on the Mount, a Seventh Grade Boy, and...
During my first year of youth ministry, I was having my students compare they same story in different gospels. I was young, overly ambitious, and utterly dependent on God showing us all grace as we made our way through story after story.
9-11 was still very much in the background during that first year and we found our way back to that event a lot in 2002. But then it happened.
We were...
April 2011
2 posts
“This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.”
Sermon on Lazarus, preached at All Angels’ Episcopal Church, April 10, 2011.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on a bench outside of church when one of my students walked up to me. She sat down and proceeded to tell me her mother’s cancer came back. It didn’t look good. After several months had passed, we found ourselves standing near the same spot of that first conversation as we...
March 2011
4 posts
Daily Devotional - Mad at God?
So about a year ago, I vaguely remember reading something I thought was ridiculous at the time. Some person wrote about how hurt they were after they experience something truly painful and then blamed God for someone else’s actions.
While I understand that impulse, at the time I was fed up with people taking cheap shots at the God I love. And so I wrote a response that lacked any sense...
Please, Don’t Snatch Our Struggle: A Response to...
The other day, I was sitting in a room full of pastors. I was, by far, the youngest person in the room and I felt this unspoken pressure to be “the representative voice of my generation.” I don’t know how other Millennials respond to this, but I did what I thought was expected. I tried to sit quietly and listen to the perspective of others people in the room that had many more years of...
The Tree of Life, Judgment and Love Wins
Rob Bell is offering an important voice in this conversation, but he’s only one voice, and we should probably listen to what he says before accusing him of saying things he doesn’t.
I had a strange experience two nights ago. I went to the Love Wins event at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
Before I can describe why it is was strange, here is a short bit of background to set the...
“I was at a huge service in an enormous church, with wonderful music, flowing...”
– My favorite story in N. T. Wright’s, After You Believe, p. 270-272.
February 2011
4 posts
“The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability...”
– Stanley Kubrick (via swisscheeseandbullets)
December 2010
5 posts
“Without the holy night, there is no theology. ‘God is revealed in flesh,’ the...”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer (via ayjay and Christianity Today)
Watchhitrecordjoe:
hitRECorder Njtam created a beautifully fitting and sweet animation for Nothing Big - a little ditty I wrote. I really love it.
hitrecord:
‘Nothing Big’ Pencil Animation
It took Njtam weeks to complete this pencil animation for regularJOE’s song ‘Nothing Big’. It was well worth it. The simplicity of the visuals mix seamlessly with the song. A very beautiful hitRECord!
...
November 2010
3 posts
“If Luther or Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky had lived today, we would have given them...”
– Wesley Hill - http://twitter.com/wesleyhill
October 2010
2 posts
“There is no such thing as orthodoxy in the old sense. We are all heretics in...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (16).
“This is the mystery of the Christian Life: to receive a new self, a new...”
– Henri Nouwen, Compassion.
August 2010
6 posts
“Something which will be familiar to anybody who has ever tried to do serious...”
– Rowan Williams
I Need to Cover My Mouth when I Preach
First Published at Out of Ur.
I love and hate the book of Job. I love it because it poses challenging pastoral questions—like being tested by God or God’s tolerance for the devil—but I hate it because it challenges my understanding of what it means to have a pastoral spirit.
Most know Job’s story. Satan approaches God for permission to test Job. God says, “Fine, just don’t kill him.” Job...
“The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the...”
– Pope Benedict XVI
“Confronted with a universe more terrible than ever in the blindness and the...”
– Michael Ramsey, The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ, p. 147
Bonhoeffer
Emotional, self-centered love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a community that has become false, even for the sake of genuine community. And such self-centered love cannot love an enemy, that is to say, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it. Both spring from the same source: emotional love is by its very nature desire, desire for self-centered community. As long as it can possibly...
June 2010
1 post
1 tag
A Lament.
In Korean society, everyone refers to each other in familial terms. Words like, “Brother,” “Sister,” “Uncle,” and “Aunt” are so common it’s simply ingrained into how you view others. The people in a korean community are a part of one family. We are all members of a collective, affecting and reflecting each other.
There is a similar sentiment in Nigerian culture. Family is extended beyond...
May 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Dear Facebook, It’s you.
Dear Facebook,
It’s you. I’m breaking up with you because you have pushed me too far. You have been stealing my information. Your CEO is a scum bag. And I hate what you are doing to me and my friends. You are poison.
Sure, we had good times. You helped me shared photos and stories and kept people up to date on what is going on in my life, but I’ve become lazy, impersonal, and...
Getting Past Racial Superiority
Another RELEVANT piece.
The stabbing of Joseph Igbineweka, student body president of California State University, Chico, is only the latest tragic event escalating racial tensions in the California university systems.
During Presidents Day weekend at the University of California, San Diego, a black member of a white fraternity threw a party in “celebration” of Black History Month. Those who...
Forgive Us, For We Know Not What We Do
Also published at RELEVANT (sensing a theme?)
I haven’t talked to my dad in months. We had an argument. He said things. I said things. We both went over the line and we haven’t talked since. Literally seconds after our altercation, I knew what I said hurt him and I was wrong for saying what I did, so I wrote him an e-mail apologizing for just that. But I also wrote more than just that.
In...
Grieving with Us
First Published on RELEVANT.
She was sitting in my office: crying, confused, not knowing what to say or do or even think. She had just found her son’s prayer journal and the message she read over and over again was that her son wanted to go home. He was in the seventh grade and he wanted his suffering to end. He wanted to die and have God take him away from this place so that he could finally...
February 2010
4 posts
Mad at God? Really?
First published at RELEVANT
How have we gotten to the point where we can dismiss the God of the universe simply because we are mad? How have people, whose responsibility it is to train, teach, and raise Christians, allowed this notion that we can judge God? Why are we so quick to blame God for things that are on creation, not the Creator?
I don’t know, but there are a few of things that I...