Because Mercy has been sick and has been coughing so badly lately, Doug and I have been taking turns cuddling her in her bed at night while she falls asleep. Last night as I was lying with her, I heard a series of horrible yells and screams outside. It turned out to not be a… Continue reading In the shadow
Category: Church
What must I do to be saved?
In the last three days I have been reminded by a series of unconnected people and circumstances of the importance of showing love to my neighbor. It seems like such a straightforward thing, really. And it is not a difficult concept to grasp or remember! And yet it continues to be the thing we fail… Continue reading What must I do to be saved?
Quotation of the Week (two for the price of one)
What should we get out of worship? Wrong question. Worship is not a utility but an offering, i.e. a sacrifice, an economy of grace that interrupts and critiques the feverish cycles of production and consumption – which is why the collection is not fund-raising but cultural critique. If you want relevance, excitement, or profit, go… Continue reading Quotation of the Week (two for the price of one)
A Simeon New Year
I was supposed to preach this last Sunday at my home church in Seattle, however on Friday I was struck with a pretty horrible flu that kept me mostly in bed for two days. I made the call at some point Saturday evening that there was no way I could stand up and speak coherently… Continue reading A Simeon New Year
Quotation of the Week
Christianity is not a belief system…Your core values tell me nothing… If you found a religion on beliefs, how you think, very shortly the people who will be in that religion will live and act no differently than anybody else in the culture. And that is exactly where we are today… Religion is a relationship… Continue reading Quotation of the Week
Christmas morning
Last night around 10pm, Doug and I gave in to the epitome of consumer lust at Christmastime: we went to Toys ‘R Us. We had been looking for a set of Snorts to buy for our daughter, and my mom had a toy item she was in search of as well. I had never been… Continue reading Christmas morning
Eyes to see
Advent is a time where we give a fair amount of thought to expectation: watching and waiting for something we long for to take place (Ted Gossard has a nice piece on this today). And we often consider the ways we have, or don’t have, eyes to see what God is doing in our midst… Continue reading Eyes to see
A voice of one calling
When we were in Tillamook, I picked up a little book off Doug’s mom’s bookshelf: the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. It was a fascinating read, and I consumed it almost in one sitting. I actually knew very little about his life and I found his story remarkable on so many levels. He details life as… Continue reading A voice of one calling
Quotation of the Week
For this reason, the “user friendly†approach to church won’t work. There is no way to entice people off the streets with hymns that are based on advertising jingles and end up with the cross-bearing, self-sacrificial, burden-bearing Jesus. Evangelism cannot be based upon our basic selfishness (“Come to Jesus and get everything you want fixed.â€)… Continue reading Quotation of the Week
Sale
Doug and I made the pilgrimige up the I-5 corridor to Seattle last night with our kids sleeping peacefully in the back of our rented minivan (okay, I swore I would never desire one of these, but they are really, really nice to have). Doug and I know this particular stretch of I-5 quite well.… Continue reading Sale