"When we consume the Eucharist, we become one with others and share their fate." - William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed, 95.  It is tempting in our culture to see most of what happens in churches as "spiritual commodities" that are served to individuals seeking some kind of spiritual need met. They ne...

Michael Spencer has a post up that encapsulates most of why I like using the liturgical calendar as a basis for worship and Christian living. I would argue (in addition to Michael's points) that how we celebrate time deeply shapes us as people, and increasingly, American holidays are shaping us as s...

I have followed Bob Hyatt's blog for awhile now, and greatly admire the work he's done in planting a church in Portland. I think we'll probably use the Lent prayer guide he put together as an aid to a fruitful Lenten season at Christ Community. Bob has an interesting post up (Franchise Ahoy!) about ...

Even after all this time the sun never saysto the earth,"you owe me."Look what happens to a love like that,it lights up the wholesky. - Hafiz, a Persian(?) poet from the 1300s (ht) I have been using Luke's gospel as a springboard for researching this paper on consumerism (looking for paradigms in Je...

Listen to N.T. Wright talk about hell: I think Wright is right on hell. It's less cartoonish and more horrifying than the popular depictions. In some ways he is following C.S. Lewis, who depicted hell as the final state of humans who reject bearing God's image in their humanity. It's not that God "s...

This is kind of how I feel as I try to write this paper on Jesus, the church, and consumerism: The deeper I dig, the more I find, the more the focus of the paper changes... now to try to say something coherent in only 5,000 words! (from the indexed blog)...

I've started research for an essay I'm writing on how the attitudes of Jesus and the early church toward possessions and money could prophetically challenge today's consumer culture, so I've started reading some very interesting books and collecting all kinds of bits on the Internet that relate to t...

One of the things I was impressed with in this last presidential election is how badly people behaved toward those they disagreed with. Old friends would turn into spiteful enemies when talking about presidential candidates, almost as if possessed by demons (I say this mostly facetiously). It was re...

I have a soft spot in my heart for anabaptist theology. I don't think I buy into everything about it, but I really understand where they're coming from and the reasons they decide to do what they do, specifically their pacifism and non-involvement in government, etc. With all the extremes we saw dur...

  Merry Christmas, readers! And hey, if you live in the Fort Wayne area, you are welcome to come out to a couple Christmas Eve services I'm involved in. I'm leading music for a candlelight service that Heartland is putting on at 7pm (1025 Vance Ave). Then the Christ Community team is facilitating a...