Tagged with church

Church is Good for You

Not long ago, I blogged the news that it’s better to give than to receive. Now comes the news that going to church is good for you. It’s almost like there was some kind of supernatural agency that wanted us to know how we could have better lives. (I blogged this on the web site … Continue reading »

The Seminary Bubble

From the Aquila Report, but I heard a UMC Bishop making essentially the same point 10 days ago: Imagine an institution that requires its leaders to attend not only college, but graduate school. Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid, that it typically requires three … Continue reading »

A Great Time to Be a Pastor

I’ve recently come across two articles that illustrate why this is a great time to be a pastor. Or, for that matter, a follower of Christ. Presbyterian leaders in Pittsburgh reeling from latest exodus: At least 200 other churches have similarly left the 1.9 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) since 2007. The most prominent issue was … Continue reading »

This is a truly horrifying crime, and not just because I work in a church. An elementary school music teacher shot his ex-wife while she played the organ during church service and, after leaving briefly, returned and shot her again to ensure she was dead, police said. Congregants eventually overpowered Gregory Eldred, ending the shooting … Continue reading »

Ross Douthat offers some welcome relief from all the post-election GOP bashing. This part caught my eye: The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the “spiritual but not religious” seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism … Continue reading »

Stained Glass in a Small World

I don’t know who did the stained glass at Turnagain United Methodist Church in Anchorage, Alaska: but it looks a lot like the stained glass at Desert Hills Presbyterian Church in Yucca Valley, California:

Church and State

When I hear Christians talking about something “we” ought to do, it often disturbs me how easily they confuse what “we” should do as individual Christians, as the church, and as citizens of a secular state. Christians from the ideological right often ask the state to base its policies on a Christian understanding of marriage, … Continue reading »

Church Web Site Up

Hey cool! Soon after I got here I asked the people who do that stuff to migrate us from the old web hosting service to the new one. And now, here you go: the new web site of Jewel Lake Parish. Yay! For the technically inclined, here’s why. First, it’s marginally less expensive. That’s not … Continue reading »

New Call!

I’ve accepted a new call. Assuming that all the denominational processes work themselves out, then effective March 12, 2012, I will become pastor of Jewel Lake Parish in Anchorage, Alaska. You can’t photograph a church, but here’s the building they meet in: (Click to enlarge).

Tab Sweep – Small Groups, Hitchens, Mainline Planting

A quick list of some things I’ve read lately that are worth sharing: First, the short but provocatively-titled “Taking Our Groups Off Life Support.” Key graf: If we are going to take our groups off life support, we are going to need permission to re-imagine what gospel-centered community looks like. We will not change the … Continue reading »