“[It is] urgent … to reclaim a Big Tent Christianity, a centrist return to ‘just Christian’ in word and action. The two poles are driving each other ever further apart, spawning ever deeper hostilities. The solution — in American society as in the church — certainly is not to let the other’s anger fuel my […]
A Maundy Thursday Meditation: Praying with Jesus in the Garden
One of the last pieces of our youth Maundy Thursday worship service. Prayer seems like an appropriate thing to do on this Holy Saturday. After washing the disciples feet, after eating the Last Supper, Jesus finds himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, doing what he often does: praying. He prays for us, his disciples, knowing […]
A Maundy Thursday Meditation: The Last Supper
This is another part of our worship service from last night regarding the Last Supper. It seems fitting on this Good Friday. On this night we remember the meal that Jesus gave us, the meal that we celebrate every week. A piece of bread, a sip of wine. This is the body and blood of […]
A Maundy Thursday Meditation: Washing One Another’s Feet
I wrote the following for a portion of our youth’s Maundy Thursday worship service. We based the service off of Bonhoeffers famous quote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” We tried as best we could to make the worship service feel like a funeral and tried to tie in the […]
Is the Financial Crisis the Church’s Fault?
Tony Jones makes the comment that without a wide swath of our culture subscribing to Calvinism and the “protestant work ethic” free market economies are a thing of the past. Are free markets incompatible with secularism? Is the only hope for the free markets a Third Great Awakening? Or maybe the first Global Great Awakening? […]
Theologically Vacuous Christian Advertising
Got a packet of advertisements in the mail at church yesterday. Two stood out: On the outside of the packet there was a teaser from a sign company: “The first step in growth? A quality church sign.” Then, on the real advertisement inside, it said: “This is the sign that reached the family and brought […]
Locution, Illocution, Perlocution, and Developmental Psychology: Age-Appropriate Cultural Texts
More thoughts have been spurred by reading the opening essay by Kevin Vanhoozer in the book he recently edited: Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends. If you are familiar with Vanhoozer, you will know that the orienting metaphor he uses in his thought comes from speech-act theory which declares that when […]
Jesus Made Me Puke
Such is the title of a new article on Rolling Stone’s website; the full title is “Jesus Made Me Puke: Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right.” In the article, Taibbi goes undercover and attends a three-day retreat with Cornerstone Church in San Diego Antonio, the church of John Hagee. I always find it interesting […]
The Narcissism of Christian Education
A fairly quick and random thought that I had during a worship service a few weeks ago: Christian education is narcissistic. Well, I guess I should qualify that. The current status and priority that we give to Christian education is narcissistic. When a Christian desires to “go deeper” in their faith or to become “closer […]
Neo-Youth Ministry Interlude
Sorry to interrupt the regularly-scheduled Neo-Youth Ministry Series programming, but I wanted to address something about the series. You may notice I don’t talk about the Bible much in these posts. There is a reason for that. Quite simply, I’m trying to keep my posts fairly short. I want these to be able to be […]
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