Category

Church

Did I Think About Staying?

give me the heart of an archeologist, that I may dig until I prove that I exist. a subterranean cathedral in my midst, where echoes come to rest. where echoes come to rest. is this where echoes come to rest? -Sleeping At Last   A year ago I said leaving Evangelicalism probably wasn’t the answer…

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A Tender Thaw

  I’m guest posting for my friend Kelly today on coming alive and how painful it can be.  Here’s a little snippet (and also why I bawled through Frozen).   Be honest.  Be vulnerable.  It’s home group, small group, community group, so it’s safe here.  This is how you build strong friendships.  Real community, the…

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How IHOP Made Me Hate God

It’s all so tangled.  It’s the bordering on financial ruin, the taking ‘handouts’ from the state, but being ignored by the church.  It’s a marriage flirting with collapse and being told not to discuss it. It’s so hard to sort out what is human incompetence, personality differences, normal conflicts in relationships, and spiritual abuse, damaging…

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Choosing Ritual and Religion to Find Relationship

  Why an Episcopal Church, some people have asked me, and the simple answer is ‘because of Madeleine L’Engle’.  But the actual answer involves Lauren Winner, Phyllis Tickle, Sara Miles, and Barbara Brown Taylor, a messy year, random Twitter conversations, and a blog post by a Pentecostal preacher.  How can I describe what reading books and seeing a…

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And Now, A Story

I will search for you in the shadows I will search for you in the light I will search for you in the morning I will search for you in the night -Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors   Once upon a time, there was a wooden fence that embraced a large piece of land.  There…

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Pastor-Kings and Servant Leaders

  “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”- C.S. Lewis   Sometimes Christian leadership feels like God is continually handing us Sauls, saying, ‘you wanted a leader,…

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When On-Fire Ends in Embers

  Though it pales in comparison To the overarching shadows,  A speck of light can reignite the sun And swallow darkness whole. – Sleeping At Last   He said “ Many of those stories highlight the bad parts of growing up evangelical.”  And he’s right.  My best memories and most formative moments happened over 9 summers…

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We Wanted the Fire to Be Popular

    “Our need is for {people} who can set the church ablaze for God, not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.” – E.M. Bounds   We were trying to make Jesus appealing to people.  Our youth group would rent out our…

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Shedding A Faith

  I have been formed by a culture of newness.  Even my existence is a testimony to the strength of the Shepherding Movement, and the only dead theologians I knew of until I was an adult were C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther. It was my two years at a Lutheran school that cemented the belief…

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