Can Israel love its enemies in Gaza and keep its people safe?

November 21, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

I realize I’ve had blogorrhea lately about the Gaza crisis. This is probably my last piece on it, taking a more theological angle considering Jesus’ command to love your enemies as a pragmatic foreign policy strategy and also proposing that we understand Satan to be the Great Terrorist who makes us all terrorists to varying degrees according to our influences, privilege, desperation, and access to tools of violence. I’m cautiously hopeful because the Israel/Gaza ceasefire scheduled for 2 pm EST... Read more

What counts as terrorism?

November 21, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

I realize I’ll get in trouble for writing this. I hope you can love me even when God puts it on my heart to advocate for people whose existence has been delegitimized with the label of “terrorism.” And I hope you understand that my advocacy does not connote moral approval of very evil things that have been done and are being done. I used to be a youth pastor to kids who society had written off on account of their... Read more

My favorite Catholic hymn: There's A Wideness in God's Mercy

November 19, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

Today at the basilica Monday mass like many weeks, our recessional hymn was “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” I really love this hymn and have been wanting to adapt it into a contemporary format. It affirms the basic goodness of God. Not just goodness in the sense that “God’s in charge so whatever He does is something we’re supposed to call good,” but the kind and gentle goodness Jesus exudes in saying “Come to me you who are weary.”... Read more

1 Kings 22: a prophecy for today

November 19, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

I’m just going to share 1 Kings 22 without comment. It speaks for itself. Share it if God speaks to you through it. (more…) Read more

The disaster of not talking with your enemies

November 17, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

One of the most cogent things that Barack Obama said during his 2008 presidential campaigns was that he would sit down with America’s enemies since it’s bad strategy to “punish” them by not talking with them. He was widely ridiculed by people whose heroes Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon accomplished their greatest foreign policy achievements with the USSR and China precisely through their willingness to treat America’s enemies with dignity, which happened in a different time before American politics became... Read more

Six things I can say about Gaza

November 16, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

It’s hard to articulate a legitimate Christian response to the tragedy in Gaza right now. My inclination is to take the side of the underdog and go against all of my fellow evangelicals whose commitment to Israel’s absolute infallibility helps make Israel unaccountable for the $3 billion of our tax dollars that they get each year. But there’s no way to justify the rockets that the Gazans are firing at Israel from a moral or even a strategic perspective. And... Read more

Five kids that God cares about

November 16, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

Below are pictures of five kids that God cares about. (more…) Read more

Three images about Gaza that speak for themselves

November 15, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

My heart is sick at what is happening in Gaza right now. I can’t think clearly enough to write with the sensitivity that I want to have in saying anything about that conflict so I’m going to minimize what I say for now, but I need you to see three things so you can understand why I’m fasting today and hopefully have your eyes opened to a tremendous blasphemy that is being done to the name of God and His... Read more

Why leadership is my least favorite word

November 14, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

In the church planter training today, I’ve been learning why the word “leadership” makes me grimace. It’s because of my leadership style. The word “leadership” has a specific autocratic connotation to me that I define myself against. We took a leadership style assessment today called the DISC inventory, which is based on the premise that there are four poles for understanding leadership style: [D]ominant, [I]nfluential, [S]teady, and [C]onscientious. A “D” is an authoritarian who takes charge; an “I” is a... Read more

A vision for my future church plant

November 13, 2012 By Morgan Guyton

I’m spending this week at the Virginia conference’s New Church Leadership Institute training for church planters. Don’t worry, Burke UMC (if you were worried). I’m not planning to do it for a couple of years if it turns out that it’s my calling. One of our projects for the first day has been to come up with a vision statement for our future church plant. So I wrote one and came up with a description for each component of it.... Read more