A few years ago Rob Bell shocked the evangelical world by saying out loud what a lot of us were thinking: that maybe our old ideas of hell weren’t really valid.  He was questioning the idea that people who don’t believe exactly like we do will spend eternity in everlasting torture, separated from God and from anything good. It makes sense that he would question this traditional perspective.  After all, most everything traditional about how we practice Christian faith is... Read more

For the next few weeks in worship we’re talking frankly about some hallmarks of membership.  This past Sunday we spoke about baptism.  After conversations with Calvary member and super thoughtful person, Trey Sullivan, I challenged him to write some of his thoughts down.  I am delighted to share them with you as Trey shares his debut as guest blogger on Talk With the Preacher. Yesterday in worship we remembered our baptisms. In the children’s sermon we were reminded of our... Read more

To finish our Advent series devoted to the Advent Conspiracy, four Calvary members shared reflections with the congregation about their experiences this Advent.  Each one was assigned one of the four emphases of the season: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.  Here are their reflections: Doing Christmas Differently: Our Stories WORSHIP FULLY, by Susan Sevier That first week of Advent, when we began to talk about this movement called Advent Conspiracy seems to me like it was... Read more

I want to write the sort of words that ring in your ears as you read them.  The kind you have to go back and read again.  And again, just because you can’t believe so much beautifulness can come out of ink on a page. I want to write like the words are fighting to get out, they have so much to say.  I want to have deep and amazing ideas, to mine the depths of human experience and pull... Read more

Like all of you, I’ve been thinking about how to voice the feelings that wash over us all in the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown last week.  This post was published first at here at the Associated Baptist Press: There are moments when words fail us, even those of us who wrestle words to a page for a living.  Last week was one of those times.  What words can possibly console the parents of 20 little ones gunned... Read more

Doing Christmas Differently: Give More Zephaniah 3:14-20 Today is the Advent Sunday of Joy.  As we anticipate the coming of our Savior, Jesus, to the joy filled songs of the angels, our hearts are heavy, heavy today.  In our prayers for salvation…in the conversation of our children…in the lullabies the choir has sung…in all of these moments and more in worship today we want to cry in confusion and grief, such grief, for the violence in Connecticut on Friday, for... Read more

So…the Pope is now tweeting in seven different languages.  Two friends sent me a link to this news and asked for my opinions on the matter.  There are several parts of this little piece of news, of course, so I wasn’t quite sure which part they wanted my opinion on.  I am, however, happy to provide diverse opinions on most anything, plus some commentary of how the Pope learning to tweet relates to our Advent worship theme, Advent Conspiracy. Here... Read more

Doing Christmas Differently: Spend Less Malachi 3:1-4 Welcome, everybody, to Advent, week 2, the Sunday of Peace.  As Christmas gets closer and closer I don’t know about you, but I am feeling the pressure to ramp up the gift-buying.  I thought I had the process under control…I usually try to keep lists and work on them throughout the year, but this week a strange panic hit me: I’ll bet there’s someone I forgot.  And I put all of the gifts... Read more

“What is it that delivers Christ into the world—preaching, art, writing, scholarship, social justice?  Thos are all gifts well worth sharing.  But preachers lose their charisma, scholarship grows pedantic, social justice alone cannot save us.  In the end, when all other human gifts have met their inevitable limitation, it is the recollected one, the bold virgin with a heart in love with God who makes a sanctuary of her life, who delivers Christ who then delivers us. Try it. Leave... Read more

Today we enter the season of Advent, the first Sunday of the new church year.  Happy new year everyone!  The season of Advent is a season of waiting…we’re waiting for Christmas and the birth of a Savior, waiting in expectation for the coming of a miracle, even though when we look all around us it doesn’t seem like miracles are imminent…too many problems, too much pain…still we wait this Advent.  It’s the whole point of the season. I have to... Read more