Here’s another quote from the Eugene Peterson interview with Christianity Today online: “Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death… So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And... Read more

I came across an interview Christianity Today did with Eugene Peterson. There’s lots of interesting reading there. (To read the whole interview, click here ). There’s several things I could refer to, but the part that caught my attention was when he talked about the church’s tendency to manipulate people. This is what he said: “Whenever guilt is used as a tool to get people to do anything—good, bad, indifferent—it’s bullying. And then there’s manipulative language—to talk people into programs,... Read more

Here’s an email exchange that’s occurred between Tom Harpur and myself that some of you may find interesting. On August 19, 2006, I sent an email to Mr. Harpur to inform him of my blog entry concerning his book (click here to read it). I thought he might be interested, but never expected to hear back from him. But on August 20, 2006, he wrote me back: Hi David: Thank you for sending along your coments re. The Pagan Christ.... Read more

Once in a while I’ll have conversations or receive emails from young members of our church who are studying at University and are introduced to new and interesting ideas. They want to discuss them with me, I suppose suspecting that I may find what they are learning interesting and challenging. It happened again this weekend. An intelligent young woman named Melanie, who is studying criminology in Ottawa, emailed me with some insights about a book she’s reading. As she said,... Read more