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How To Get the Most Out Of Church
Of course I love church. That goes without saying. But I don’t always love the church. I don’t always love the way we do church or the way we incarnate the church. It sometimes gets to me and drains me. Some of that is me. But a lot of it is the way we approach church as church members…
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What you don’t understand about Sacraments
The old argument goes children need to understand the sacrament before they receive it. I am still surprised to hear this. As a priest, I hear it from people of all sorts. When they do suggest such a thing to me, I simply ask them Even after they were baptized as infants? The look I…
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The Church’s Missing Ingredient
I’m tired of the blame. The health and vitality of the The Episcopal Church and the Mainline generally is an oversimplified story of the 20th Century, too easily shouldered on the leadership of the 21st. It’s always the politics or the practice or the beliefs or the Bible or the liturgy or anything else ad nauseam, but…
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What does Jesus communicate?
I have this feeling that we all live with a paradox about Jesus. On the one hand, we feel confident, every one of us, that we could actually answer that question What Would Jesus Do? And, at the same time, when pressed on what Jesus’s most important message is, we shuffle our feet, look at…
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Not Gatekeepers, but Gateopeners
There, squirming in such a comfortable chair, made to feel prickly by the moment and its intensity and not the leather or the cushion, it is not my ass, but my brain that is jittery. As a priest, interviews are a whole different beast. This moment, as I recall was the most agonizing for what…
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Saul or Paul?
a Sermon for the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle Text: Acts 26:9-21 From Saul to Paul In the story of the Conversion of Paul, we have perhaps the ultimate Christian example. Paul speaks of his old self, a conversion, and a transformation. Before he became Paul, he was Saul: a self-proclaimed zealot. He was…
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When GOD Gives Conflicting Instructions
On her blog yesterday, the Rev. Susan Russell announced a Celebration of Equality. It is a really special event in the life of her Pasadena congregation and I’m sure is going to be an awesome sight. In the midst of this celebration is a “sneak preview” of a new documentary about the Rt. Rev. V.…
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Church: Club, Community, or Neither?
Awhile back I wrote about how much I hate announcement time. Go back and take a look at it, because I feel justified in saying that. Announcement time, as I’ve experienced it in the several congregations I’ve served has, for the most part, been a horrible train wreck. This is mostly the case because it is…