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Giving Thanks When the Holiday Doesn’t Deserve Them
I kind of hate Thanksgiving. I do love my family, the festivities, watching the Detroit Lions, the parade. I especially love the food. Oh, I love the food. For the longest time, my favorite food in the whole world was stuffing. It still comes close. No, the reason I hate Thanksgiving is the holiday’s origin.…
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Just Cut the Church Programs
For several weeks I’ve been writing about engaging different groups in church. Then I wrote about dealing with time constraints and what it means for planning. Now, I am making a personal appeal for an entirely different approach: it is time to get rid of our programs. As Phyllis Tickle adeptly outlines in The Great…
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Why I Hate Announcement Time
My least favorite part of any worship service is the announcement time. There are so many things wrong with it and there are so few ways to actually fix it. I’m starting to think we should do away with the whole enterprise. Many Episcopal churches place the announcements in the middle of the service. Honestly,…
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The Bridegroom’s a Jerk; I Sure Hope God Isn’t
In this parable, (Matthew 25:1-13) with bridesmaids, waiting for the bridegroom, the easy reading is wrong. It doesn’t work. If we see this as being about…The Second Coming or Heaven after death or the perfect example of Christian community… Then God is an idiot. See, the easy reading makes us think two things: We need to prepare for…
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How about we occupy the church?
Of course the teens should occupy the church; but not just teens. Us! We should occupy the church! We should demand a better church! We should lay claim to our leadership of an institution that today only benefits some! Brian Kirk asks in a column for Patheos: “Should we help teens occupy the church?” which…
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Halloween, All Saints’, & too much candy
A web-friend was recently asked about Halloween and what he thinks about it as a Christian. His response, as expected, was thorough, honest, and appropriate. Mine, is well…perhaps a little less so. I don’t really dig on Halloween & Church. Not because I think it is demonic or sinful or whatever. And it is not…
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The Future of Seminary: Fix Dioceses
[Over on Patheos, they are doing a great series on the future of Seminary education. I haven’t read it all, and nobody asked me for advice, but I thought I’d throw in at least a couple of cents. Kurt Willems nails the economic burden and Tony Jones makes a compelling case for the very tools of…
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9 Keys to engaging youth in church
[This post inspired my ebook, A Church for All. I encourage you to check out the information page to find out more!] When I started this series of posts on engaging different age groups in church (so far children and pre-teens), I deliberately chose the word church, rather than ministry. Engaging people in ministry isn’t…