blip : Beyond Lost Intellectual Ponderings :

I’ve been continuing to do some thinking on the book of Ecclesiastes this week.  It’s not the most straightforward book from which to teach, and at first I was worried that in committing to spend a few months in it, I’d end up simply circling depressing and hard questions.  Not that it’s bad to sit [...]

[Read more →]

(I’m still trying to figure out a way to think about technology and worship)

The best books on technology and worship offer methods for carefully appropriating devices that contribute to the unique form of a congregation’s worship. Technologies should not be imposed from above, but should arise from the communal discernment of the church.

While I appreciate [...]

[Read more →]

For the college group I lead we’re reading in Ecclesiastes for the next few months.  Last week we talked about how such a skeptical, some would say heretical, book made it into the canon.  The dominant interpretation of Ecclesiastes is that it is framed by a narrator who brackets the beginning and end of the [...]

[Read more →]

Today is a day when our nation is called to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Well, here’s a bit of MLK history that is conveniently forgotten. On Thursday, April 4, 1968l 4, 1968English: Contemporary English Version (1999) – CEVWP-Bible plugin, Martin Luther King Jr. had retreated to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, worrying about a sanitation strike in [...]

[Read more →]

One of the recent and prevalent positions on homosexuality in churches, including mine, is that they are “welcoming, but not affirming.”  What that actually means, however, no one really seems to know.  We all would acknowledge that statement to be paradoxical, but I also find it to be more problematic than helpful, theologically as well [...]

[Read more →]

Title: Fully Alive
Date: Jan 11, 2009Jan 11, 2009English: Contemporary English Version (1999) – CEV500 Internal Server Error

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.
Please contact the server administrator,

[Read more →]

As is usually the case, the driving ideas for my last sermon didn’t come from my own head. That almost never happens. I got my stuff from Karl Barth’s wonderful little book on prayer: Prayer. Here are a few of the quotes that proved helpful for my sermon:
Prayer is a grace, an offer of God. [...]

[Read more →]