I don’t struggle with depression. I know many who do, but that’s just not my constitution. (As Rhett Smith writes, male depression is more common than you might think, and it’s often masked by other, harmful lifestyles.) For a couple years, around my divorce, I took an anti-depressant. I came off of Wellbutrin over two years ago, and I haven’t felt the need for any medication since. However, there are times when various aspects of my life collide and collude — both... Read more
A few years ago, I wrote a book that carries the subtitle, Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life. That’s a book that continues to engage people and congregations. It’s about traditional spiritual practices — centering prayer, lectio divina, making the sign of the cross, etc. — and how to incorporate those practices in your day-to-day life. But yesterday, as I was working in the garden, two things occurred to me: The converse is also true: everyday practices can be deeply spiritual.... Read more
Minnesota’s premier minor league team, the St. Paul Saints, is known for wacky promotions: a pig delivers the balls to the umpire, a nun give chair massage, and there’s a group hot tub over the left field wall. Well, next month, the Saints are becoming the Aints for a night: ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – The St. Paul Saints plan to change their name for a game sponsored by atheist groups. The American Association minor league club will call itself... Read more
Italian artist Igor Scalisi Palminteri has reimagined some traditional Christian figures as superheroes. It’s pretty sweet. Read more
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to serve as the Scholar in Residence at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. You can listen to my sermon (on the Didache and what it has to teach the church today) at the bottom of this page. My main public lecture was titled, “Why the United Methodist Church Is the Most Screwed Up Denomination,” a title that was chosen by the pastors! It was an interesting time. As seminarian and youth pastor... Read more
The good people at Family Christian have released Edifi, a “Christ-centered tablet,” according to one review. The company describes it thusly: Our touch display tablet is much more than an e-reader! It is loaded with family-friendly features and FREE apps including Safe Search Wi-Fi web browsing, 27 Bible translations and Christian internet radio. Plus, check email, social network, display photos and download ebooks with our Family Christian Reader app! They don’t say whether the Ordain Thyself app will work on... Read more
On this day in 1979, the fiasco known as Disco Demolition Night took place between the two games of a twi-night doubleheader at Comiskey Park. Those were the days. Read more
A long time ago, someone told me, “The best writers are great readers.” The thinking was that if you read a lot — and read good stuff — you’ll figure out the English language works, how to develop an argument, how to construct a persuasive claim. Fair enough. I think there’s truth there. But more recently, someone else told me, “You can’t be a reader and a writer. There isn’t enough time. You have to choose.” And I think this... Read more
So says Roger Olson, in a lengthy post on the problems in the Great Commission Baptist (née Southern Baptist Convention): But my main point here is to ask why Southern Baptists can’t get along? I’m not surprised, however, that they, the conservatives who took control of the SBC often using scare tactics and venomous, even unchristian, attacks on fellow Southern Baptists are now turning on each other. Is there something in SBC DNA that makes this inevitable? No, I don’t... Read more
That’s what Bethel University philosopher Dan Yim is thinking about: I think I’m beginning to understand Christian Fundamentalists a bit more, in that they tend to make both types of inference errors: (a) mistakenly believing that they have the right rules (as opposed to the hypothetical “right now” rules) and (b) not taking into account the probability that the conditions for observation evolve and in fact alter (and should alter) our allegiance to hypothetical “right now” rules (or propositions or... Read more
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