An example of holy conferencing?

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

Kevin Watson is a fellow Methodist blogger whom I discovered recently. He just did a series on “holy conferencing,” one of several phrases incorrectly attributed to John Wesley which is commonly used in United Methodism today to talk about what I have sometimes called “breathing kingdom,” conversation among people who are surrendered enough to the Holy Spirit that the flow of God’s breath is palpable between them. In the wounded-ness of our embattled Methodist denomination, there’s a longing for this... Read more

Is communion intellectual property?

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

I learned a hard lesson today. Some of you saw my post where I had developed a contemporary version of our United Methodist communion liturgy Word and Table and recorded it on my iPhone. A friend informed me that there was a copyright issue with doing that, so I wrote the United Methodist Publishing House and was promptly ordered to take down the video and the blog post. I’m not meaning to be snarky, but wow, communion liturgy is intellectual property?... Read more

Unsafe in black and white America

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

I was frustrated when I took this picture last night from the fifth row at the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert because I wanted a picture of the eagle that is the symbol of “Free Bird,” one of my favorite songs of all time, but there was a big old Dixie flag underneath it so I couldn’t share it on my facebook page. The reason I decided to share it now is because many people who look like me get offended when... Read more

We are always praying; the question is to whom

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

Yesterday our senior pastor preached a thought-provoking sermon on prayer based upon Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6. He talked about the way that prayer is a privilege, not just an obligation, and that it can encompass a variety of behaviors that are done intentionally in the presence of God. What hit me today as I sat in mass at the basilica is that we are always praying; we just often aren’t praying to God. (more…) Read more

How does the Bible model Biblical discernment? (Acts 15)

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

Two weeks ago, Jonathan Martin kicked off his “Both And” sermon series on Biblical interpretation by looking at the story of Acts 15, when the Jerusalem church officially decided that circumcision would not be required of the Gentiles. Jonathan titled his sermon “Spirit, Word, Community” after the three components of spiritual discernment that are in play in this passage. These are similar to the four aspects of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. What is interesting and scandalous... Read more

What I will share at Wild Goose (the written version)

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

At 5:30 pm on Friday, August 9th of this year, I will be at the Wild Goose Festival Performance Cafe sharing 25 minutes of trance music with a combination of spoken and sung vocals. The trance set that I have developed is five songs in continuous mix with an encore of the first song at the end. So the following poetry goes with each of those songs. I footnoted the 37 scripture references so you can see how my mind... Read more

Should women cover their heads in church?

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

The latest movement in neo-patriarchal evangelicaldom is a call for women to return to covering their heads in worship per the instructions of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. The movement’s website features a quote from neo-Calvinist scholar R.C. Sproul: “The wearing of fabric head coverings in worship was universally the practice of Christian women until the twentieth century. What happened? Did we suddenly find some biblical truth to which the saints for thousands of years were blind? Or were our... Read more

It’s not heroic martyrdom to “tie up heavy burdens for others” (Matthew 23:4)

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

Jesus’ woes against the Pharisees in Matthew 23 should be mandatory daily devotional reading for American evangelicals. It’s incredible how much we resemble the religious insiders who crucified Jesus. One of the things that Jesus says about the Pharisees in verse 4 is that “they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others.” We are living through a time in which many Christians measure their “faithfulness” to God according to the weight of... Read more

Should your heart mess with how you read scripture?

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Morgan Guyton

Renovatus Church has just started an awesome sermon series on how to read the Bible that will be either tremendously liberating or offensive for you to hear, depending on what kind of Christian you are. This week, Jonathan Martin shared the pulpit with Dr. Chris Green, a theology professor at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary, to talk about what ought to happen to us when we read Bible stories that make God look ugly and arbitrary, like when He chooses one... Read more

Henri Nouwen on a good teacher’s “articulate not-knowing”

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:05 pm By Morgan Guyton

Many Christians operate under the premise that humanity is so thoroughly wicked and corrupt that we can’t trust our intuitions about anything. So the only solution to that is to find a “Biblical” teacher who knows the answer to everything and wins every argument. The assumption is that anyone who questions that teacher is part of the devil’s plot to sabotage the teacher’s faithful witness. But my experience with teachers and mentors has been that I seek the opposite of... Read more