The problem with assuming we know the details is that often reality differs significantly. Then it becomes easy to question our calling.
It is the time of year when resolutions abound. Or if not resolutions, goals. Maybe goals are too weighty a burden: maybe wishes. It is the time of year when wishes abound. Despite the popularity of making “New Year’s Resolutions” – and despite the popularity of articles detailing how to make resolutions “stick” – most people know that lasting life
How do we understand and define what the church is constituted to be? To answer this question, one must first ask: what is the mission of the church? The Missio Dei The first thing to notice in this question is the assumption that the mission is of the church. Here lies significant misunderstanding and misplaced value: the mission is not
We must become walking, talking clues pointing to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.
The numerous physical healings performed by Jesus to alleviate human suffering are only a hint of the anguish in the heart of God’s Son for wounded humanity.
In the Christmas stillness, there is hurry. In the Christmas stillness, there is distraction. In the Christmas stillness, there is worry. It is tempting to say, “In the Christmas hurry, there is stillness; in the Christmas distraction, there is stillness; in the Christmas worry, there is stillness.” We wish to take people from their likely experience – bustle, activity, news
As you celebrated Jesus’ birth by exchanging gifts, did you remember that God’s presence with us is the greatest gift we will ever receive?
God’s love is so great, it will conquer all the world’s horrors. God’s love is so prodigious, no evil can possibly prevail against it.
Jesus Christ, John says, is the true light who was coming to enlighten everyone in the world in the more direct and expansive way, like the sun.
“Jesus calls us at Christmas to enter into the Kingdom of Liberty, to be set free by his Father’s love.”
What will we be sharing from our Methodist/Wesleyan “waka” (canoe) in whatever region of the world we minister? What treasures and gifts will we share?
Just as in pre-missionary Tonga, the moral sense of the people was identified with the moral sense of the chiefs, now in Christian Tonga, Jesus is the “chief of chiefs” – the ‘eiki ‘o e ngaahi ‘eiki.
So strong is this ideology among many white church leaders, those in theological circles, and some in society, that it rings loudly of “White Liberation!” suggesting that acknowledging ones’ privilege has liberated the individual from the bondage of systems that work on their behalf. I am concerned with the white Christian who wants to do something prophetic like telling other
I think I am drawn so much to poetry these days because over and above anything else poets are themselves. They speak from a raw, sometimes scandalous place that many of us don’t have access to. As a pastor it can be very hard to be yourself, yet it is essential if you want to have anything of value to
Finding and listening to a “Noah” is a reminder that there is a part of our faith that needs to be challenged to understand the profound personal nature of life in the Spirit.
One time as I came down from a platform during a church musical rehearsal, I passed several women and whispered, “I’ll be right back, I have got to go to the bathroom!” I rushed away and couldn’t hear the laughter that erupted behind me; the sound guy had not yet muted my lapel mic. My whisper had been heard throughout the sanctuary.
Most of us are familiar with John 15—it is particularly central to my life and to the life of the local church that I pastor, The Orchard UMC. It is from Jesus’ command there, “to go and bear fruit” that we take our name, vision and mission. Most of us are familiar with the flow: Jesus begins with an eight-verse
Sometimes we need a space where there is new room for the Holy Spirit: space in our lives, in our schedule, in our church building, in our preaching, in our house. For me, luckily enough – except it never seems to do with luck where new room is involved – this has been at the New Room Conference. In an
Much is being made these days in my (admittedly very narrow) slice of the world about what it means to be Wesleyan. “Wesleyan” in this case doesn’t refer to a particular denomination but to a broader theological stream birthed through an eighteenth-century movement and largely defined by the commentaries and sermons of John Wesley. Wesley himself once wrote a tract
When the Spirit of the Lord is upon your life you can play your harp because you have been anointed to handle hell, haters, and hypocrites.
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