Spirituality. Politics. Music. Life.
This week, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church will begin in Charlotte, North Carolina. This will be the first “regular” General Conference since 2016. I thought I would put down a few thoughts ahead of this potentially momentous week for the new United Methodist Church. These will be a combination of personal reflections […]
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Frederick Buechner once described “Prayer” in a way that leaps to my mind this week, in these days after our communal experience of the Eclipse. Buechner wrote: “We all pray whether we think of it as praying or not. The odd silence we fall into when something very beautiful is happening, or something very good […]
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Increasingly, I am convinced the opposite of “faith” is not “doubt,” but “fear.” This is because the deepest level of “faith” is not “belief,” but “trust;” and the opposite of “trust/faith” is “fear/anxiety.” Instead of faith’s opposite, doubt is a part of the journey of faith. Skepticism is, or should be, embraced as how we […]
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The greatest trick Constantine ever played on our world was to convince us that the Empire that killed Jesus should actually embrace the religion that bears his name. Why this isn’t self-obviously shocking to us today is a symptom of both how completely our culture has accepted the ascendancy of Atonement Theology; and also why […]
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The United Methodist Church is now a Center-Left denomination.America is a Center-Left Nation. These are the twin theses I want to put before you today. After the past several years of bitter and partisan theological infighting, our separation into UMC and GMC is now complete. Studies show fully one quarter of former-United Methodist Churches have […]
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Dallas awakes to snow and ice, and flurries continuing to fall as I write, and I’m here to update you again about our ministry helpful our houseless neighbors. Yesterday, it seems to me, was one of those both beautiful and heartbreaking days…especially if you’re going to serve others. We started with our primary mission (IMHO) […]
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A year ago Ash Wednesday… It is about this time of night(1) I have not come home from church, but instead I am sitting alone in Roberts Forest at KPUMC. The fire pit is dying down. (This is an actual picture….) I’m praying a lot. I’m playing guitar. And I’m doing some pretty intense crying. […]
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Kessler Park Friends: It’s been some time since I’ve updated you on the ongoing “split” in the United Methodist Church. I’ve been trying very hard not to “over-share” the play-by-play of almost daily developments, because it seems to me this could get exhausting. Further, as a part of my own spiritual discipline, I’ve been trying […]
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It’s Christmas Day, and so it’s the perfect day to talk about shit. I’ve probably already lost some of you, because you don’t think preachers are supposed to use such words. But for those who aren’t already writing my Bishop (feel free) read along…. Artists can get away with such words better than preachers. That’s […]
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“AND…WHO AM I?” This is the unspoken question the religious lawyer quizzing Jesus never asks. I really wish he had. Because I need the answer to this question, and so do you. I’m talking about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Every time I preach on that parable —as happened yesterday— I’m struck by a […]
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