I was having a conversation with my students tonight about different denominations and what distinguishes us as a Lutheran church. Being a part of a Lutheran church within a few miles of bastions of Baptist (Southwestern Baptist Seminary) and dispensationalist (Dallas Theological Seminary) theology, we are definitely in the minority. Most of my students go […]
Vision Statement for YM Leadership – Foundation: Theological Practice
This three-part series is part of a paper I had to write for a class in 2008. I thought it made good summer blog content. I welcome your thoughts. The grounding principle in my approach to ministry with adolescents begins with the conviction that youth ministry, as with any form of Christian ministry, is fundamentally […]
Want a Free Theological Resource for Ministry?
Free Resource Suggest an idea in the comments for a free theological ministry resource My current online course at Luther Seminary is “Overview of Christian Teaching,” an introductory theology class. As part of our final project we can either take an exam, write a 9-12 page paper, or do some project that can be used […]
Theology in Real Life
As I said in my last post, I am taking a basic theology class in seminary right now, and almost every week we have some case study about how to deal with varying theological problems and heresies that might appear in our churches. As this class progresses, I am seeing a pattern in my responses: […]
Theodicy and Hurricane Katrina
We had an interesting exercise in my seminary class last week, and I thought I would post it. The class is Overview of Christian Teachings, a basic theology class. we were studying the nature of providence and the professor provided the following prompt. My response is below. “The editor of Faith & Values has called […]
My Dream Youth Ministry Communication Application
No, it doesn’t exist yet, but I wish it did. If any super web-savvy people (who also happen to have a ton of money or can get people to invest) could pull this off, they could make a killing off of this idea for an application. It would be especially helpful in youth ministry but […]
Why Politics is More Exciting than Christianity
Watching people’s passionate involvement in the intense politics of the past month or so has been an interesting phenomenon. We literally had millions of people working in one way or another to get their candidates elected, and last night we watched as euphoria erupted over an election of historic proportions. It left me wondering: Why […]
Why are Politics and Theology Directly Related?
I find it interesting as I read blogs of people of certain theological persuasions during election season because you tend to learn their political leanings as well. In reading through the various blogs this year I’ve noticed that most people on the more liberal end of the theological spectrum are liberal politically, and conservatives are […]
A Theology of Graduation
I made the following post on the discussion boards at Youth Ministry Exchange: Is it theologically appropriate to recognize graduates in the way we do? Every year we have a breakfast for our high school seniors and then honor them in the service, have a slide show, and they wear their cap and gowns during […]
Now Reading: The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas
I also started another book this week: The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics. I’ve had the book for a while and have wanted to read something by Hauerwas, who intrigues me even though I’ve never read anything of his. I got introduced to him via quotes I read on blogs and these videos […]