Category: Uncategorized

We spent the afternoon at the zoo today…

Back when I was first was getting into the emergent church conversation, I was trying to tell my spouse and colleagues what was involved. Of course, the modernity/postmodernity dichotomy was an easy explanation, but it doesnt’ fully capture what we have been talking about “It seems to me,” I went on, “that modernity was the […]

James Mills of Knowtown Fame, has the honor of being the 10,000th visitor to this blog, so he will be getting a lovely gift from the pastoral library. Actually, I am going to send him a used copy of an old book that I just discovered by Glandion Carney, one of the co-facilitators of the […]

The word’s of Willie Shakespeare help me announce that I will see my ten thousandth visitor tonight or tomorrow. This isn’t a big milestone for the mega bloggers like Jen, Kiwi, or Cleave, but it seems pretty important to little old me. One of the things that I recently learned is that Site Meter (the […]

KING: Brian, I guess you as well knew you would be on the list. What did you make of the story? MCLAREN: Well, I heard about the list just a couple of days before I found out I was on it. I’m probably one of the people Dr. LaHaye has never heard of. So I […]

Once upon a time, there was a princess named Aurora, who was given some gifts from some fairies . . . oh you know the story of Sleeping Beauty. Anyway, after a whole bunch of stuff happened, her true love, a guy name Prince Phillip, was captured by the evil fairy Malificient. The good fairies […]

Starting next week, I am going to be hosting a chat each Tuesday at 10 p.m. Central Time (GMT-6) focused on spiritual practices. To get ready for this, I’m going to be on tonight at 10. If you are around, why don’t you join me. We can talk about whatever is on your mind. To […]

You may notice that I have reinstated the Blogger Bar at the top of the site. I had taken this off (I am one of those who has been aroung long enought that I have an old Blogspot Plus site which allows me to omit it entirely), thinking that it was basically an advertisement for […]

This week a bunch of folks are out in San Diego for the last YS sponsored Emergent Convention out there. I wish I could be there, but am getting excited about the Nashville version in May, which will be very different than the West Coast version. One difference, which we have been working on, is […]

I was looking over my last post, and was shocked by something I had written in the heat of trying to get out of Perk Central and to the church. I wrote: My church will probably never be very hip (after all, I’m their leader!). Yet can we change to carry out God’s mission in […]

The church I serve is as far from “hip” as they come. It isn’t a complaint, but a reality. When you have a congregation that has 130 years plus of history together, the hipness factor quickly goes out the window. As Anne Beatts once said about Saturday Night Live its only so long before the […]

Gracious God,    we don’t fully know the details,    but it appears that an election has happened in Iraq. There was violence, to be sure,    but those who would vote       put aside their fear       for a deeper belief in self rule. Now comes the hard part. Putting together an election is relatively easy    compared to putting […]

Prayer In The Wood

Someday, when I’m far too old to enjoy it, I might actually get a full nights sleep. This past Wednesday, the folks at my church gathered as we always do for dinner and some sort of program. The Wednesday night thing has been hard to sustain at times. It is a deep tradition for some. […]

Grace had a nightmare and I’ve been getting her back to sleep. Of course, now I am pretty much awake. Sigh… I’ve had one other thought on my last post on threats. The question rises, of course, whether there are times that threatmaking is appropriate. Take Jennifer’s grandmother for example. She encountered a situation that […]

“Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?” “You should Love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and you should love your meighbor as you love yourself.” I have been around church folk for quite a while now. It started in my early teen years, hanging around a big Southern […]

I just wanted to make sure you knew what one looked like.

Recently Doug, Jen, Will, and others have commented on the rising attacks against all things Emergent by several different evangelical authors. I have hesitated to comment on these concerns as this is really an “inside” conversation rather than a broader one across the traditions. You see, those of us in the so-called “liberal” mainline traditions […]

I was a mediocre student in high school mainly because I wasn’t motivated and I didn’t want to be any better. Back in those days, one could get out of high school with only two math classes. Since math was my least favorite subject, I took the bare minimum — a basic algebra class and […]