Do Spiritual Roots Matter?

Last updated on: September 24, 2018 at 8:49 am By Morgan Guyton

Building a cohesive spiritual community with college students is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. There are many valid, competing priorities in the lives of college students: studying for difficult classes, pursuing career-related internships, taking on leadership opportunities in student government. In the midst of all these priorities, why have spiritual roots? If you have a solid self-care routine and a good friend circle, then what is the relevance of church? Christian groups with a more black... Read more

Satan and the Scandals of the Church

Last updated on: September 20, 2018 at 2:26 pm By Morgan Guyton

Pope Francis is my problematic fave. I’m sure he’s exhibited plenty of personal moral failures in the Roman church’s ongoing sexual abuse scandal, though I don’t think I could have done better if I were in charge of a complicated organization where almost every bishop and cardinal has dirty hands. Francis preached a sermon to some bishops recently in which he talked about the role of Satan as the “accuser of the brethren” in perpetuating the church’s scandal. There was... Read more

A White Man Reflects On Serena Williams

Last updated on: September 11, 2018 at 1:47 am By Morgan Guyton

Tennis has always been an aristocrats’ game. It’s like golf. You take your prospective business clients to play tennis at the country club when you need to close a deal. If you’ve really made it to the top, your backyard will have a tennis court in addition to a swimming pool. I grew up in the white aristocrat world of tennis. My grandparents had a court in their backyard. I played it on the grass courts at the country club.... Read more

No, You Can’t Blame Pope Francis For This

Last updated on: August 29, 2018 at 10:14 pm By Morgan Guyton

[CN: church-based sexual trauma, some brief description] It’s getting hard to keep quiet about the cynical gamesmanship going on amidst the far-right cardinals in the latest iteration of the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal. As a survivor of church-based sexual trauma, my blood has boiled to see the anti-Francis conservatives trying to leverage a scandal in which all of their hands are filthy to force his resignation. No matter what Francis is personally guilty of in terms of covering up... Read more

Did Lou Reed understand God’s kingdom better than evangelicals do?

Last updated on: August 24, 2018 at 11:36 am By Morgan Guyton

Admittedly I put the word “evangelicals” in the title of this blog post as click-bait, to some degree. I’ve been so busy trying to start a coffeehouse that I’ve blogged only one other time this month so I need to make up for my abysmal numbers. But I used Lou Reed in my opening sermon of the school year in a completely inappropriate and yet actually valid reference to the kingdom of God and so I wanted to share about... Read more

Methodist Coloring Book

Last updated on: August 19, 2018 at 7:10 am By Morgan Guyton

At my Thursday men’s group last week, somebody brought up a song from the punk band Dead Milkmen called “Methodist Coloring Book.” I haven’t been able to get the song out of my head. The chorus reveals an ugly caricature of the Christian gospel that is ubiquitous in American culture after 40 years of evangelical culture war: “You’ve got a Methodist coloring book and you color really well; just don’t color outside the lines or God will send you to... Read more

Austin Channing Brown: Black Dignity In White Space

Last updated on: July 23, 2018 at 9:58 pm By Morgan Guyton

If there’s one book your church small group needs to order for this fall, it’s Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made For Whiteness. It’s probably one of the most apt uses of memoir that I’ve ever encountered. If you want to understand how racial dynamics play out in predominantly white space from the perspective of a black woman, this is the most accessible, informative narrative account I’ve come across. I had the honor of... Read more

Good Biblical Words: Truth (John 1:5)

Last updated on: July 12, 2018 at 11:02 am By Morgan Guyton

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not seize it. John 1:5 This verse is one of the most important metaphors in the Bible for describing the nature of truth. Truth is like light. It does not coerce anyone to take its point of view; it simply exposes what is real. Jesus says in John 3:19: “Light has come into the world but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Humans have an... Read more

Good Biblical Words: Mercy (Matthew 9:13)

Last updated on: July 9, 2018 at 8:41 am By Morgan Guyton

“Go and find out what this means: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.'” Matthew 9:13 This is what Jesus tells the religious authorities when they criticize him for partying with sinners. I would say that this verse is the most important verse in the Bible for Christians and a summary of the gospel that we need to hear every day. Everything that God teaches us and commands of us is for the sake of mercy. Christian discipleship is this: receiving God’s... Read more

Good Biblical Words: A Series Introduction

Last updated on: July 3, 2018 at 4:20 pm By Morgan Guyton

God has convicted me of the need to write a different set of blog posts for a while. I’m going to call this series “Good Biblical Words” because the Bible has many good words in it, but understanding how they fit together is not self-evident. The second century bishop Irenaeus wrote that the Bible is like a mosaic of jewels that is supposed to form the image of a king, but they are often rearranged to make the shape of... Read more