During these last several posts I have been writing about the different ways God spoke to me during my sabbatical time away. Today I will give a reflection in the ministry arena. One of the things I wanted to do during my time away is ask the question, “What are the primary gifts/abilities God has given me, and how can I be the best steward of those gifts during my next season of ministry?” You would think after 14 years of full-time ministry that should be a no-brainer. However, it is alw
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Sabbatical Reflection #3 Knowing my Gifts/Abilities
I added the following paragraph before point III in this previous post, and thought I would also share it separately for anyone who has already read through the original post prior to my editing of it: As an aside, there seems to be a great fear among Protestants that the Orthodox Church is a “dead” place, where there is no longer any thought, development, learning, seeking, searching and longing for truth. The attitude within Orthodoxy is presumed to be one of “everything is settled, so no n
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Appendix to the Post on Ecumenical Councils
Okay, so let me first explain my blog title, I usually do a title of “the wedding of so and so” and every once in a while something hysterical will happen like the tying of the tie with the funeral director that I heard so many laughs about, (if you don’t know what I mean, check out the wedding of Amanda and Brian), and then I decide to change the name of the blog title. Jessica and Dave’s was no exception. EXCEPT for the fact that this time, it was the Monsignor who screwed up! He called Dav
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the wedding of jessica and what’s his name, LOL, dave
by Kevin Jon Heller Excellent news — and a major blow to the AU’s promise of impunity for Bashir, given the symbolic and practical importance of South Africa for the continent generally: SOUTH Africa will arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir if he visits the country, despite an African Union decision to ignore a war crimes warrant against him, the foreign ministry said yesterday. Civil society and human rights groups across Africa called yesterday for African sta
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South Africa Will Enforce the Warrant for Bashir
Thanks to the slightly creepy magic of Google Street View , the Fireshot add-on to Firefox, and my middling graphic editing skillz, I have managed to cobble together an annotated visual of last Thursday’s bike calamity . Click the image to embiggen it, as SJKP likes to say. A note on the directions indicated in the image: camera’s eye view here faces more or less due east down Burnside Street.
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Bike Calamity ’09, Annotated & Illustrated
Not to focus too much on US News & World Report this week, but their religion and politics writer Dan Gilgoff has another piece on the issue of LGBT rights, this time in the form on a mini-interview with the Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese. The focus is on the role of religion in promoting LGBT rights, and Gilgoff concludes that clergy are becoming a new lobbying force on behalf of equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks.
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The Growing Power of Clergy as a Voice for LGBT Rights
Examiner.com Interfaith Spirituality 101: what are three universal lessons from … Examiner.com Hinduism is often referred to as “the eternal law,” and that law includes making wiser choices (leading to more joy) by humbly acknowledging the limits of …
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Interfaith Spirituality 101: what are three universal lessons from … – Examiner.com
John Turner Laboring under the misapprehension that political bodies listen to the opinions of mainline Protestant denominations (we didn’t even have a label for mainline Protestantism on this blog), the Episocopal Church recently repudiated the centuries-old belief that God gave Christian Europeans the right to wrest land away from benighted natives. A friend forwarded me an article from Indian Country Today celebrating the resolution, which calls for the overturning of an 1823 Supreme Court decision (Johnson v
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Doctrine of Christian Discovery
Book Review: From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God by Frank Viola.
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Hidden Romance in the Bible
article courtesy of Ogi Overman at The Jamestown News : Nine added to ranks of Bill White Scholars By Ogi Overman When Bill White died in 1980, his obituary in the Greensboro News & Record mentioned that a scholarship fund in his name was being started and asked for donations. From that one solicitation came enough funds to endow the scholarship, and the following year the first William J. White Scholarship was awarded to Bobby Dawson
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David “Ogi” Overman with the Bill White story
So…today my mind is racing…AND my A-D-D is in full gear…so here is some randomness… #1 – This morning I got mad…REALLY mad…at stupid people. A few things hit me the wrong way and I just flat out asked God, “why don’t you just kill the stupid people?” (COME ON…you’ve probably asked Him to do the same thing…don’t lie!!!) That seemed like a good idea to me…until He reminded me that if He were killing people for stupidity that I would be the first one on the list! The ONLY reason I am in minis
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Seven Random Thoughts
A central Wisconsin father charged with reckless homicide for not taking his dying daughter to a doctor told police that he believed God would heal her and that he thought she was simply sleeping when she became unconscious. His wife, convicted of the same charge in May, testified that calling a doctor “would have shown complete disobedience” to what she and her husband believe in
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Father on trial in faith healing death of daughter; convicted mother defends actions
Hello again, so good to be able to report to you about all that God is doing here in the DR. Yesterday was our “free day”. We got to go around Santo Domingo and do some shopping and sightseeing. We definitely did that, but it seemed like we had just as much contact with people about God as we did on any other day. It is amazing to know that God has a reason for everything. We didn’t really know why our free day was in the middle of the week. Well, it is because God is the ruler of this uni
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Salem Baptist Church – Thursday
For the last couple of decades Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago and Saddleback Church in Southern California have been the twin towers of influence in American evangelical circles. Thousands of churches have sought to emulate their success by adopting Willow Creek’s seeker church model and Saddleback’s purpose driven church model
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Why Willow Creek and Saddleback are Losing Influence While North Point and LifeChurch.tv are Gaining Influence
The Internal Revenue Service earlier this month sent a letter ( full text ) to the Minnesota-based Warroad Community Church indicating that it is closing an ongoing investigation of the church “because of a pending issue regarding the procedure used to initiate the inquiry.” Presumably the procedural problem stems from a decision by a Minnesota federal district court in January holding that IRS rules have improperly delegated authority to open a church tax inquiries.
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IRS Drops Church Investigation Until Procedural Problems Are Resolved
If you thought R&B artist Chris Brown’s career would be hurt by viciously beating his girlfriend Rihanna and threatening to kill her, you would be wrong. His song “Forever” is one of the top 10 iTune downloads after being featured in the YouTube video that’s taking the world by storm. Now, when I think of everlasting love and romance, I can’t say I think of Chris Brown
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Shake your groove thing … in church?
Bobby Gruenewald , Terry Storch , Dawn Nicole Baldwin , Carlos Whittaker (aka @bobbygwald , @terrystorch , @dawnnicole , @loswhit ) captured in a candid moment as we all collide at our hotel for Echo Conference ‘09 . No need for “caption please” because I’ll tell you what’s really going on…. Bobby just flew in from the other side of the world – it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, Bobby’s always just flying in from the “other” side. Terry, grinning from ear to ear, is stok
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Echo Conference 2009 “Behind the Scenes”
The Anglican Church of England, much like the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, like to share. I know, sweet, right? Aerobic exercises during mass (”Stand,” “sit,””kneel”… “roll over”), pawing out of the same hands for the Eucharist and sipping out of the same cup (or chalice, depending on how shee-shee your particular house of worship wants to
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Church of England makes water into swine?
The poll is closed, and a very small number of the people have spoken: I am to blog it out, exposing the rip-off to the daylight of scrutiny. Note, dear reader, that I never promised this would be a brief story; I think it’s important to be as accurate and complete as possible, because this story does not land in a happy place, and also because I want to be clear on how I came to be so sure that I have been ripped off. The handsome timepiece shown above — pictured in its bike-wreck-damaged state — came with a multi-mode lighting function.
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A Watch and Brownies Engraving
It is fascinating to hear these Uncivil War veterans voices on tape speaking about the Battle of Gettysburg.
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Gettysburg Veterans, 1938
David Cameron said yesterday that the next general election is absolutely not in the bag for the Tories. “The public are going to take a lot of convincing” about Tory policies, he added, particularly about their ability to be “safe and sensible on the big economic decisions” that must be taken in the coming years. As a result, Mr Cameron concluded in his radio interview: “We are really focused on what we need to do between now and the next election.” How true — and how sad.
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Headline-chasing is harming Tory credibility
What’s this? A “Pink List” of the “100 most influential gays in Britain” appears in The Independent on Sunday; I’ve moved up from 78 to 69; then — plop — through my letter box comes a smartly embossed letter from Coutts, the bankers to Top People. They’ve seen the list, they say.
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It’s queer, this letter from Coutts
Incestuous couplings, blood feuds, betrayals, ambition, hubris, suicide by fire, collision of egos, power struggles, revenge, retribution, tragedy, defeat, reconciliation of opposites, symbols of sex and power. Is this Wagner’s Ring Cycle? No, it is Volkswagen’s epic Takeover of Porsche Cycle.
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Can the Porsche mythology survive under VW?
If I see one more advert citing the immune boosting qualities of a potion, supplement, tea, leaf or berry and how people need to smear it on, drink it or eat it in order to prevent themselves getting swine flu, I will run shrieking through the streets.
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Potions to stop swine flu? I’m immune to such nonsense
by John C. Snider © 2009It’s official. American Freethought is now a “prominent atheist website.” So implies Robert Wright in his latest essay, “End Times,” part of his guest-blogging stint at Andrew Sullivan’s “The Daily Dish” blog at The Atlantic. Who am I to argue with him? “End Times” is Wright’s latest volley in the general direction of so-called “New Atheists,” which I’ve said repeatedly (and may continue saying until somebody corrects me) is a squishy term that is not embraced, as far
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Defining Anti-theism
This morning, several hundred members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints gathered on the steps of Salt Lake City’s Matheson Courthouse and on the lawn of the Salt Lake City and County Building across the street to express their dismay that District Judge Denise Lindberg was considering ordering the United Effort Plan trust, which contains a great deal of church property, dismantled and sold. I’m not going to engage in much more commentary.
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The FLDS rally at the Salt Lake Courthouse, June 29, 2009
Ever feel like you’re being brainwashed? And by the way I’m not suggesting that you totally agree with everything in this article because I’m a nice guy and have your best interests at heart.It’s just that you know there are times when you find yourself suddenly craving a big Mac or salivating about that new GM muscle car or the new Ford mustang or just absolutely have to have those special tooth whitening strips so you’ll be more attractive… And moments before you watched the commercial or read
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The Difference Between Being Influenced and Brainwashed