Jul 31, 2019
My doctoral discipline, the history of theology, taught me to dig for answers that lie beneath the surface. Why did they say it like that back then? Why did they read their bibles the way they did? How did the philosophic movements of their day shape their theological conclusions? But that training also helped me learn...
Jul 24, 2019
If we don't experience some risk, danger, knee-scrapes, falling and failure as children we don't learn how to process the big problems of adult life. That's not only true spiritually, it's true physically, socially, and brain-neurologically. Obviously, then, this affects parenting, teaching, and pastoring. But what...
Jul 17, 2019
Why all the public tantrums in western culture? People have been malformed. We have had it so good that we have, for a generation or two, protected one another from the very things we need to help us grow and mature: failure, loss, pain, embarrassment, hierarchy, conflict, and risk. Christian spirituality, because it is...
Jul 10, 2019
Western culture teaches us, directly and implicitly, that failure is bad. And so we think that both we ourselves should never fail and that other people should never fail. Things are now so good that we even extend that to, "people should never have their feelings hurt." But is that good for us? Does that weaken...
Jul 3, 2019
My son, John, and I discuss how and why financial pressures weigh so particularly heavy upon Low churches. Big donors are wonderful, but they can come with unexpected consequences. Why is that? We also think through the issues of church board composition, how the Low churches might be still more relevant,...