When the Good News Isn’t Jesus waded ashore into the muddy banks of humanity in an age ruled by a religious order who justified their spiritual authority by their meticulous obeisance to their self-serving interpretations of ritual law and unyielding judgment of their followers, an economic system that thrived on...
“Alright, that’s enough for today,” is a phrase that I have never uttered to my therapist until today, especially with no chance of getting a refund for the 20 minutes left on the clock. Truth be told, I would have gladly paid full price to miss this whole session. I...
Peace, Peace where there is no Peace. This weekend I heard a provocative sermon by the Dean of Houghton College Chapel, Michael Jordan, who invoked the idea of the hypocrisy of saying peace, peace where there is no peace. Jeremiah 6 says, “13 “From the least to the greatest, all...
The Problem with Mixing Prophecy with Politics. I come from a long line of Dispensationalists (those who believe the Bible contains a secret code for predicting the events of the end of the world, the Second Coming of Jesus) and I was theologically trained at the mecca of dispensationalism and...
I have been seeing a lot of “yay capitalism, and boo socialism,” from Christians lately and I find it really puzzling. Am I missing something? Why do Christian…s feel the need to shill for capitalism? Does the Bible explicitly instruct us to create free markets? Did Adam Smith write a...
I have been thinking a lot about Christians and the Second Amendment. I know, in the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park, “hold on to your butts.” In my tradition, the big E., it is often argued that the Second Amendment, much like the Ten Commandments was...
There is a story in the book of Genesis about Jacob, the son of Isaac, a conniver, manipulator and all around usurper. Jacob could have definitely been a captain of industry or a king of Wall Street with his Machiavellian instincts for sticking it to other people for his own...
I don’t know if this election cycle illuminated ugliness and divisiveness that already existed or helped create it, or both? People are unfriending each other, ending real friendships, leaving churches and using political positions as litmus tests of intelligence, character and spirituality. This, much like the on air tv personalities’...
It seems to me that when we talk about what the church looks like, specifically, mission, vision, and values from Acts chapter 2, we uniformly miss one of the central components. Why is that? Take a look with me at Acts 2, the first description of the first church: 6 A...
Our mission statement claims that we are “missional.” We usually like to define things in the positive; however, for this blog we will attempt to define the term “missional” by what it is not with help from wwwfriendsofmissional.org. Enjoy. The missional church is not a dispenser of religious goods and...