It’s Sunday.  Did you go to a building for a worship service this morning?  Increasingly, the answer given by committed Christians is “no”.

In the past week or so, there have been a number of posts about the Dones.  These are the very involved and serious Christians who are dropping out of the organized church.  I’m one of them. Continue reading

#TheresGottaBeABetterWay

For me, one fingernails-on-chalkboard irritation  is lack of interest in understanding other people’s perspective.  Not lack of understanding, but lack of interest in trying to understand.

If you want to find how well-shaped my character is, one good test is to show no interest in understanding what I’m trying to say.  That frustration transfers over to conversations that I’m not a part of, too.  Which is why I love radio talk shows.  Maybe not. Continue reading

Adam and Eve carried within their DNA the potential for all of the physical variations – obvious or subtle – of the human race.  Ever feature and hue woven into the tapestry of humanity were hidden possibilities.   Every culture and clan; every nation, tribe and tongue; they all spilled forth, splashing and splitting and breaking into a thousand rivulets from the headwaters of creation.

At every division, sin was the stone in the way.  Like a massive rock outcropping in a stream, jealousy, pride, hatred, and murder split the flow, sending one group this way and others that.   Along the way God interacted, protecting and redirecting, sometimes encouraging the division, other times bringing divergent streams back together.  The Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses.

Ultimately, when the time was right, Jesus. Continue reading

We like certainty.

We like to know we’re on the right side, that the things we believe are true.

Much of our security – our identity – is found in our certainty about political views, ideas about God, or the superiority of our country.

This tribal inclination, this embracing of ‘isms’, this staunch commitment to a particular church or political party or ideology – this is common.  This need to be right and sure about our affiliations and opinions – this is a normal part of being human.   Certainty is a comfort food for the brain.  But our certainty is often misplaced.  If one thing is certain, it’s that we can’t all be right all the time about all those things we hold so dearly.  And that’s a problem. Continue reading

If there is a main theme to my blog so far, it is that God desires to be known to the world through an interconnected people.  Advancing this thought sometimes feels like tilting at windmills, because the barriers seem so many and so high.  The church is marked particularly by how fragmented it is, by the denominational lines and the separation – even animosity – between different groups. Continue reading

Folks, as I read the Bible, I become increasingly convinced that the typical ‘me-and-God’ take on what it means to be a Christian is completely at odds with God’s purposes.  While God is concerned about every single person out there, his intentions have much more to do with y’all than with you.

This is a bit nuanced, but hang with me as we dig around a bit. Continue reading