Archive - Dear Reader… RSS Feed

I’d Love To Speak At Your Next Event! AKA, My Other Passion

July 26, 2011 in Dear Reader..., Sermon with 3 Comments

Mosaic Pic - guest speaking at Mosaic (SD campus). They are not responsible for the content of this blog!

Dear Reader…

I’m truly blessed by all of you who read the Pangea Blog on a regular basis.  Some of you have been walking this journey with me for a couple of years now, and others perhaps for weeks or months.  Whatever the connection may be, I truly appreciate you allowing me to enter into your weekly conversations on faith and justice issues.

Obviously, I’m passionate about writing.  There’s something else I’m passionate about as well… Speaking.  Actually, writing is a fairly new expression of how I communicate the Scriptures with people.  Long before I was writing the Pangea Blog, I was preaching to youth, young adults, and adult congregations.

I love it.  Speaking to groups is one of the things I believe I was designed for.  And I would be honored to speak at your next event. Continue Reading…

Dear Reader: Pangea Moving to Patheos!

July 6, 2011 in Articles, Dear Reader... with 6 Comments

Dear Reader…

In a great turn of events, I’ve been invited to move to Patheos as a hosted blogger for their network.  This is really exciting for multiple reasons.

  1. The chance to collaborate with some excellent bloggers who belong to this network.  I will be part of two Patheos portals, both the evangelical and progressive groups.  This is because I consider myself a progressive (politically) and an evangelical (biblically).  If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you probably know that neither label captures my Anabaptist view of faith in itself, but hopefully participating in both pools will bring some balance.  I look forward to being part of syncro-blogs and symposiums on various issues in the Christian faith.
  2. This will give me the chance to broaden my readership.  Not that having a large following has ever been the “goal”, its always fun to know that what I write connects with people that I may have never met if not for the world wide web.
  3. Yes, I will be able to be hosted by them for free and may even make enough money to pay off my social media expenses each month.  I must admit that this was a motivation, but certainly minor in comparison with the above two.

What you need to know:

  1. My RSS feed will be unchanged.  If you subscribe through feedburner, nothing will be different and I will be the one managing it!  Continue Reading…

Dear Reader: Dealing With The Uninspired Self (Days When I Feel "Blah")

June 1, 2011 in Confessions, Dear Reader..., Faith Journey with 7 Comments

 

Image Credit: SpEEdyRoBy

Dear Reader…

Do you ever have days when you just feel “blah?”  Nothing motivates you to go change the world.  To do the things that you love, seem laborious.  To do the things that you hate, feels worse than they usually would.

For me, the things I love include reading, studying, and writing.  The things I hate, well… the “honey do’s” of life such as house chores.  As I write this (which is taking discipline, I might add), both love and hate lead to a path of angst.  Unfortunately, I know that on days like this at the setting sun I will look back upon all of my wasted time and wonder – What’s my problem?!  Come on Kurt Willems, you have too much to do to squander time and be unproductive!

My guess is that you have these kinds of days too.  Maybe it’s the old “Monday” syndrome that affects us all.  Continue Reading…

Dear Reader… Thinking Out Loud about Biblical Inspiration

January 24, 2011 in Biblical Authority, Dear Reader..., Theology with 36 Comments

Dear Reader…

Today I want to do some thinking “out loud” about this question: What is so important about inerrancy? It seems to me that people want to hold on so tightly to this word, but that such a term is not helpful because it is often used dogmatically.  But before I get to that discussion, let me give you a central conviction about biblical authority: I believe the Bible is authoritative, not in itself, but because of the fact that God has delegated his own authority to it.  God is the ultimate authority. NT Wright says it well: “When we say ‘the authority of scripture’, then, we mean – if we know our business – God’s authority, Christ’s authority, somehow exercised through the Bible.”[1]

With that acknowledged, how about the distinction between “God Breathed” “Infallibility” and “Inerrancy?”  I first would ask about: what does the Bible actually say about itself? It claims to be God breathed.  The other two terms are imposed on the Bible, so we must be honest about that reality.  But, lets take them each individually.

“God Breathed” – This is what the Bible claims about itself in the area of inspiration and authority.  It is useful for “teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in all righteousness/justice.”  This gives us the foundational purpose of the Bible.  It can teach us how to live lives on the Rock of Jesus.  This ultimately affirms that God was involved in getting us the Word through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, while allowing the original authors to express – occasion, personality, nuance, rhetoric, genre of choice, etc.  Which is why Paul had the freedom to say things like “I, not the Lord,” (Corinthians) for instance.  I affirm this as my primary way of understanding biblical authority. Continue Reading…

Dear Reader… First Post At a New Site!

November 29, 2010 in Dear Reader... with 8 Comments

Dear reader…

If you are reading this, you are part of a wonderful group of folks who are journeying with me towards “new heavens and new earth” in the blogsophere for some time now. We have been together on the “Groans” site for quite some time, but today marks a new phase in my blogging journey.

The new page is called “Pangea Blog.” There is a reason for this name and I invite you to read the About section.

In the next few weeks I will gradually begin writing articles. I am really excited to have you all as part of it!

Blessings to you all and may we walk in step with the Holy Spirit…

Dear Reader… Deconstructing Religion, part 2 (A conversation between friends)

August 10, 2010 in Dear Reader..., Theology with 8 Comments

Yesterday I posted my “Dear Reader… Deconstructing Religion– Moving Beyond in and out” and have had multiple responses.  Mostly positive, but one that was a bit skeptical made me realize that I ought to give you a bit more context on the concept of Centered vs Bounded sets in ethics.  My exploration of this was inspired by Mark Baker’s, Religious No More: Building Communities of Grace and Freedom.

First off, I want to remind all of us that any image or analogy breaks down somewhere.  There was some push back about the negatives of the second image missing some things.  The one that sticks out most was from Ken Bussell over at “Emerging Worshipper.”  He said: “…a problem I see with these illustrations is that they fail to describe the movement of God. God is moving toward us and pursuing us as well, is He not? In a sense we are all a part of the in-group, in that God is pursuing all of us.”  To this I simply say that it would have been appropriate to have arrows from God pointing to all the other arrows, no matter their direction.

I also had a more detailed discussion on Facebook regarding this with my good friend James-Michael Smith who blogs at Discipleship Dojo.  He is an excellent blogger who I commend to you, even though we may have a hint of disagreement on this issue.  This what I want to direct your attention to for the remainder of this post… Continue Reading…

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