The Dangerous Pursuit of Pastoral Fame

As my chiropractor was working me over yesterday, she was asking about the reading I’m currently doing for a degree I’m working on. After I rattled off the titles and subjects of a number of leadership books, she said, “Wow, what are you going to do when you are finished with school—rule the world?” “Actually, [...]

The Prayers of Lent

PATHEOS – March 2012 Just a few days before Lent began this year and in anticipation of it, Doug Pagitt–who somehow always manages to pastor us all, thank God– set a date for the two of us to engage in a Skyped conversation about Lent. But not about Lent in general, he said. Rather, he [...]

Moving Church Past Contracts

Many of you have likely read Seth Godin’s most recent manifesto, “Stop Stealing Dreams” where he tackles the question of education in his typical blog-thought style. The whole 33,000 words are free for download if you want to give it a read. In section 26, Godin talks about the contract of adhesion. Here’s how he [...]

Phantom Deity Disorder

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The other day while having dinner with friends I subconsciously reached my hand toward the attractive woman seated next to me. It was an effort to steal a private moment of affection with my wife by a brief grasp of her hand. Everything was perfect except for the fact that the woman sitting next to [...]

Conversation with John Shelby Spong on Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World

Here is my conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong on his book “Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World” from my Radio Show. In the conversation I ask John why people are not hearing from him the point he is trying to make, that the Bible is important to our lives and we should fully [...]

Wisdom From Kierkegaard

This Quote by Kierkegaard is rocking my world the last few weeks. The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we as Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged [...]

Aids, homosexuality…confronting the terminal illness of judgement

Last night, working in the emergency department we had a woman maybe in her seventy’s come in with her forty year old son. To look at him you would never guess he was forty. He looked older than his mother, he was thin, gaunt and literally wasting away. He didn’t have to say a word, you [...]

A Tapestry of Belief and Experience

Diana Butler Bass’ Christianity after Religion explores the tension between spirituality and religion, and experience andbelief.  Her work is more descriptivethan constructive, but it sets the agenda for Christians who wish to addresstwenty-first century spiritual challenges and not the issues of a bygone era.  Bass notes that belief has oftenbeen a deterrent to taking Christianity [...]

Evangelical 2.0: The Deception of Mark Driscoll’s Acts 29 Network

I’ve written quite a bit about churches like Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill and the concerns I have about a lack of accountability, given that they’re not part of a denomination or other larger body of oversight. Churches led my ministers like Driscoll and John Piper seem to be independent, yet pressing a surprisingly consistent agenda [...]

Physicality of Lent

In the third installment of my conversation with Phyllis Tickle about Lent we talk about the physical nature of spirituality. You can follow the entire lent conversation on the Lent Blog here. You can watch all the videos in our conversation here.

Kickstarting the Emergent Conversation

For a long time, the emergent conversation has been labeled and criticized (to some degree, rightly) as a mostly white male phenomenon. Thankfully, that is not the reality on the ground any longer. Over the years, the conversation has become much more diverse — racially, ethnically, socio-politically, as well as theologically. But that story hasn’t [...]

Is Lent Holding Us Back? Phyllis Tickle and Doug Pagitt Discussion

Patheos.com is hosting a lent conversation and Phyllis Tickle and I offered the first few postings. Here is the second. I asked Phyllis if there is something about the yearly pattern of Lent where we are pulled back into the church story, given church language that doesn’t sit well with many of us who don’t [...]

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is …a church where beauty is cherished. Where people are given the space to express their creative nature and make beautiful things. A space where candles come in all different kinds of colors, containers and arrangements. Where banners are made to fit a space and a people. Where lanterns light up [...]

I am topsoil + to topsoil I shall return*

There is something comforting to me in the idea that I am part of the earth and will always be part of the earth. Maybe it’s rooted in my rural upbringing, where I was familiar with the dirt, and played in it, and got my hands dirty often. There was a time in my adult [...]