Pre-pandemic, our church (along with many others) had been in the habit of offering “alternatives” at communion. This included gluten-free bread or wafers as an alternate to “regular” bread, plus grape juice in addition to wine. I have to say it honestly never occurred to me this might be exclusionary or ableist. I kind of thought we were being sensitive and inclusive, actually. But as we have returned to serving communion in-person this fall, I’ve been revisiting our communion table... Read more

Christianity historically has been a capacious body. There’s room for difference (think, for example, of the four gospels, each with a different telling of the narrative of Jesus). Sometimes the very back-and-forth of dialogical discernment of truth itself becomes part of that body (think for example of the letters of Paul to the Corinthians, or the Lutheran Augsburg Confession and the Apology to it, where the confession of the faith records the call and response of disputation and clarification). But…... Read more

I’ll start here with a bit of auto-biography. Back in 1994-1995, I took a senior seminar in philosophy on postmodernism. We had this fantastic professor, Richard Ylvisaker, and he assigned relatively accessible texts. Nevertheless, to be honest I had no idea what I was doing. The most memorable book we read and discussed in that course was Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self. To be honest, I can’t remember the thesis or the main points of the book, which is... Read more

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a variety of thought pieces by clergy-adjacent leaders asserting it’s really bad for pastors out there right now. I don’t know exactly why they think this, other than their reliance on a few popular bloggers who claim the “Great Resignation” among clergy is bigger than the general “Great Resignation.” I blame this one blog post by Carey Nieuwohf, who manipulates the narrative around the numbers in order to draw the conclusions he draws.... Read more

On All Saints’ Sunday the church recognizes the strong spiritual bond between those who have died and now rest with G-d, and those of us, the living, who remember them. We remember them as saints not because they were perfect, but because in the Spirit we saw Christ in them, just as we see Christ and the face of G-d in our neighbor. We have many promises in Scripture that nothing can ultimately separate us from those who have died. Romans 8:... Read more

Sunday I preached on Mark 12: “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” The next day I got a... Read more

I was first clued into the work of Ched Myers when I read his magisterial commentary on the Gospel of Mark, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. I’ve literally never been the same since. So when this new co-authored volume arrived (Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization), and I saw it was intersecting with another theological growth area in my life, the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and consideration of what... Read more

This summer we hosted Queer Camp, a weeklong gathering of about 90 middle school, junior high and high school LGBTQIA+ youth, a camp staffed primarily by queer adults and parents. Toward the end of camp, I asked the kids to share with me what they wished cishet knew about them. So many of the participants in the week of camp have experienced harm from adults not listening to them, not respecting them, etc. So I wanted to learn and listen.... Read more

For quite a while now I’ve wondered whether the traditional “Sunday school” model was actually working for faith formation. I mean, I know that Sunday school in classrooms by age group is often fun for the kids, a learning experience for the teachers, and a brief weekend relief for the parents, so in that way there are clearly benefits. But is it impactful in terms of actual faith formation? A study of youth ministry that came out ages ago (by... Read more