Tag: Christian

  • New Rob Bell Book Drops Tomorrow

    Rob Bell’s new book, What We Talk About When We Talk about God is out tomorrow. It is a subject that is near my heart. Hopefully this video will tide you over or whet your appetite.

  • The Problem of Evil (Eating Scripture)

    As a preacher, I love the lectionary for its seasons, but hate all of the jumping around! This week’s story comes in between the Baptism (1/13) and the visit to the synagogue (1/20 & 27). Now we jump back to the middle. But that might be able to help us understand what is going on.…

  • The Scandal of Lent

    The Scandal of Lent

    Every year I struggle with Lent. I struggle with what we are really called to do. Certain things are different, and yet we don’t really live all that differently. We fast or we take on new things or we mark our worship differently. But something doesn’t ring true about it for me. As I wrote…

  • A Ridiculously Basic Introduction to Emergence Christianity

    A Ridiculously Basic Introduction to Emergence Christianity

    Before I begin, I need to give a whole bunch of caveats. First, this is not only ridiculously basic, but inappropriately basic. The subject is too big to cast in just a few sentences. Second, you should probably just go out and buy Phyllis Tickle’s book of the same name and read it yourself. Third, I have…

  • More Christian Than Christians

    More Christian Than Christians

    A year ago when the Occupy Wall Street movement developed, it was easy to recognize a correlation between the church’s mission and #OWS’s. It’s participants were attempting to forge a different way of gathering that was egalitarian and grass roots. It’s decision making was communal and encouraged a type of shared leadership most churches can…

  • On Spelling It Out

    It is normal today to say we live in an abnormal time. We think everything is damn confusing. Or not at all. We speak out of one side of our mouths that this is a time of all this conflicting data, but ideologues speak with such consistency and confidence. We recognize complex problems and we…

  • Christianity and the Falling Man

    Christianity and the Falling Man

    From Surreal to Real Hearing that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center wasn’t the most arresting thing I heard eleven years ago. At work, the rampant speculating, the absurd discontinuity of airplanes and buildings in far away places made the tragedy distant somehow. News spread in the waning minutes…

  • Pussy Riot Reveals Russian Morality Police

    Or I (heart) Pussy Riot I’ve only just come across this story as I catch up on my podcasts and as Christian Piatt covered a few days ago. Christian covers the discomfort we have in the prophetic action and the challenge of protest in an admirably personal way. You should really check out his post.…