Rarely does a book captivate my attention and my desire to experiment, try something new. Mark Scandrette’s book Practicing the Way of Jesus is an interesting mix of theology, stories, examples, advice, resources. Though most of all it is an invitation. He has crafted it in such a beautiful way to draw you into reimagining great [...]

Here is the prayer I read September 11, 2011 at Vintage Fellowship, during our 5th anniversary celebratory service.*   To Creator, obedience To Creation, service To each other, community In all things, love, in all things love With possessions, simplicity For life, prayer In our world, creativity In all things, love, in all things love [...]

{this is the reading I wrote for our recent Vespers event, ::Third Stone Sun Celebrants::. it is composed of two parts, the first part is derived from Ezekiel 1 and the second part from the beginning of the chapter “The Look” from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.} A Vision of the Blessed Cisneros In the thirtieth [...]

I wrote a short piece over at Clayfire Curator on the subject of curating worship services around the theme of mystery. It was titled “How to Curate the Unspeakable (in 3 Easy Steps)” and you can read it here. Interestingly, I found a lot of parallel ideas in a post written by Cary Gibson reflecting [...]

Wolhart Pannenberg on preaching’s role in worship, from his Systematic Theology Vol.3 p.335-6 As preaching of the gospel, Christian preaching must always be proclamation of the inbreaking of the future of God and is reign for us that became an event already in Jesus Christ. Insofar as it is this, it shows itself to be [...]

I’ve reviewed a few other titles from the Ancient Practices series that Phyllis Tickle has edited. I have been pleased with the different books of that series that I have read so far, with Sabbath not being an exception to that. Author Dan Allender explores the topic of Sabbath keeping from an interesting and powerful position. He [...]

“I’ve been thinking recently about our temptation to try to become more like God — more holy, more sinless, more perfect. Perhaps the thing we should be working for is to become more human — more fragile, more vulnerable, more unfinished; to be better at being human.” -Cheryl Lawrie

Recently I did a quick search for pray in the Bible. The results I got were rather surprising. I wasn’t trying to do serious research, so I didn’t go to the Greek and Hebrew and only used one translation (NRSV). I did run the search again with the KJV and did get significantly larger results, [...]

In my latest library perusing I came across Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. I’d originally heard of it from Robb Ryerse who had read it a few months back and blogged about it. I find the whole topic of how technology and media affect us all very interesting. [...]

I have avoided this final reflection for a week or so now. I feel as though I have some final thoughts upon Caputo’s ideas in The Weakness of God but I haven’t felt that they were clear enough to put down on {the proverbial} paper. So here are my random thoughts on and quotes from [...]