Church

  • Rob Bell on Politics and Guns: “We don’t do despair”

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    In a series of episodes on The RobCast called simply “Politics and Guns,” Rob Bell deals with many of the issues surrounding the politics of guns in the United States. He begins with perhaps the most important starting place: politics. Through the arc of the series, Bell describes the nuance of the political landscape, with particular…

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  • Religion as Community or There’s more to religion than we think

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    A more honest understanding of religion then is something involving tradition, community, and commitment. It expects more out of us and a commitment to be with one another. It is connection, not only to GOD and other people, but to the many people who came before.  Religion and belief aren’t the same thing. Many of us…

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  • The Trouble with Being Done with Church

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    It is a familiar sight in many of our churches: to see the empty space, the pew that once held up a faithful member, a devoted, active, loving Christian. One of us. And now, an empty space. Nobody has died, of course. Not this week, anyway. The space is empty because the person who was…

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  • Cross or Crucifix?

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    I still don’t know why Christians wear crosses. The cross was a Roman torture device. The cross was the vehicle the state used to kill insurrectionists and rebels. It was like the medieval head on a pike. It wasn’t reserved for normal criminals or representative of criminal justice in the first century. It was how…

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  • What the Kingdom doesn’t look like

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    Simply getting rid of our stuff isn’t the action Jesus is calling for. Not exactly. Though it is certainly much closer than “GOD wants you to be rich.” Love and inheritance Proper 23B  |  Mark 10:17-31 A mind-blowing teaching We have arrived in Judea. Days ago we’ve predicted the Passion and watched Jesus transfigured on…

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  • How to start deconstructing church

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    I want to help make the church better. Seriously better. Like the kind of thing where everybody feels like there is a place for them. Where everybody is connected and a full participant. I also want to help make church even more like GOD wants it to be and less like we’ve come to expect it to…

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  • The Sleeping Giant of Progressive Christianity

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    Is this the end? Phyllis Tickle has long argued that the fight over human sexuality and marriage is the last battle of the culture war. It is the last plank of the cultural conservative political platform; and the plank is crumbling. That is why the fight has been so brutal. She argues that conservative Christians…

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  • 10 things to know about marriage and the church

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    My grandfather loves to tell the story of how he and my grandmother first got together. He thinks it’s a sweeter story than it really is. He relishes the telling and loves to watch Grandma squirm as he goes. He builds it up, giving the reader clues about how he needed to woo her and…

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