I am attending the young clergy leadership forum (#yclf on twitter) with the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) in Washington, DC. This is the agency that lobbies the federal government on behalf of the United Methodist Church according to the agenda set forth every four years by our General Conference. I decided I would blog about my experience in a series called “Jesus inside the beltway.” The first question it seems important to ask is why they exist.... Read more
My brother John Meunier recently responded to a blog post from Episcopal priest Martin Elfert in which Father Elfert had contemplated a question from a woman about the morality of living in a polyamorous relationship. As the foundation for his answer, Elfert quoted church father Irenaeus who said, “God’s glory is the human being fully alive,” basically intimating that the moral criterion for evaluating polyamory was to ask whether it makes the people involved “fully alive.” This made me a... Read more
Whoever is not against us is for us. Whoever is not for me is against me. Both are in the Bible: Mark 9:40 & Matthew 12:30. And neither verse should be tossed around out of context. Today’s Daily Office reading from Mark 9 concerns the first verse. Jesus’ disciples tell him that they see someone casting out demons in His name and wonder if they should stop Him “because he wasn’t following us.” (more…) Read more
It’s not often that something I read on Huffington Post gives me “hopey-changey” goose bumps. But CampusPride director Shane Windmeyer’s post about “coming out” as a friend of Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy is one of the most hopeful things I’ve read in a long time. I challenge you to put your ideology aside for a moment, whatever it is, and consider the witness of love that has happened between these two men. (more…) Read more
There’s been an outburst this past week from evangelical women bloggers against the idolatry of virginity. Three prominent posts have come from Sarah Bessey, Rachel Held Evans, and Emily Maynard. It’s been amazing to read in the comments about the toxic things that youth pastors and parents have said to conservative evangelical girls about sex (“No man will ever want you now,” etc). I grew up in a more moderate evangelical environment where I never encountered anything like purity balls... Read more
I’m starting a podcast of my sermon audio so this will be the first entry. I preached this past Saturday at LifeSign on Psalm 42, which is a psalm that I have a long relationship with. I actually rapped my own translation of the psalm as part of my sermon, which I had already shared in a different post. Please don’t laugh. The audio of my voice without any reverb or the full mix to hide behind is not super-flattering.... Read more
I made a track on January 4th, 2010 that’s kind of playful in a fairyland sort of way. I was experimenting with some special effects that make hissing and swirling sounds. I didn’t realize that it was a song about Pentecost until I heard Amanda Garber’s beautiful sermon about Pentecost from last summer. So I put Amanda’s words on top of the track and I’m really excited about the result. I’m calling it “Ruach” (the Hebrew word for spirit, wind,... Read more
You know the stereotype about the cheapskate Sunday lunch church crowd who shortchange servers on their tips? Well, one pastor in St. Louis decided to try her best to live into this stereotype. She was mad that her church group got a mandatory gratuity charge for their gathering so she wrote on her receipt, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” And then the server put the receipt up on the atheism page on reddit. Nice witness!!! Well... Read more
On June 18, 2007, I made a track that I originally called “Ignore me; I’m building an army.” It has been through half a dozen modifications since then. When I discovered in seminary that the word Satan in Hebrew means “the accuser,” I put some of my words over the track and called it Satan, which is actually on this site. But I think I’ve found a better application for the track by coupling it with a sermon Greg Boyd... Read more
I have gone on several short-term mission trips. I love going and think they’re awesome, but not because I think that I can “save” anybody in a week. Actually the reason I go is to be further converted to Christianity by serving people who seem to have a deeper, richer relationship with God than I do. In Methodism, missions is mostly about service and awakening to the realities of global injustice for the person going on the trip. In the... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In