only wonder understands

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In my desire for pastoral confidentiality, I refrained from using the real name of “The Homeless Guy,” forgetting of course that Kevin posts his name in the FAQ’s on his blog. So, from now on the pseudonym will go away and we can speak honestly of a person that we read and know. Several folks […]

“Bob,” the guy I mentioned in my last post, is trying to get back to Nashville. While I think he may have made some bad decisions in heading out west (he grew up their), the reality is that he has a support community here in Nashville if we can get him home. I am willing […]

There is a guy I met back in May during the Emergent Convention who blogs at http://www.thehomelessguy.net/. This guy, who I will call Bob, has some distant connections with my church and has been in the homeless community in Nashville for a long time. I had been happy to see that Bob’s life had taken […]

It has been a fairly slow time in the life of my church. The summer slump is in full swing, and in spite of what Lyle Schaller and George Barna would say about the Seven Day A Week Church, I’m not really sure I mind. It’s been good to slow down, to not think much, […]

The latest NORC study… Link Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. At the same time, the number of […]

Many of you in the emerging world are familiar with Will Willimon. He has been a regular feature at the National Pastor’s Convention and gets around in evangelical circles a bit. Will was just elected to be a Bishop in the Southeast Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. There’s no word on where he will […]

I am monitoring the United Methodist Jurisdictional Conference election of Bishops. Check out the latest updates at http://www.methoblog.com.

Distance from a culture must never denegrate into a flight from that culture but must be a way of living in a culture. –Miroslav Volf in Exclusion and Embrace

Sam Carrasco, Rudy’s son, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Rudy is the director of the Harambee Center in Pasadena, the successor to John Perkins. He’s also a friend who I connect with via the internet. Jen Lemen is working to raise funds to help Rudy and Kafi with medical expenses. If you can help, go […]

I have generally stayed away from political machinations on this blog for quite a while. At least one of my regular readers noted that they didn’t like when I wrote on politics, and I have honored her request for the most part. I imagine all sorts of reasons for her concern, such as my left […]

My wonderful. amazing, and pretty cool administrative assistant keeps asking me when I’m going to start an “emerging service” at our church. The issue of starting another service has been bumping around in my head for quite a while. Some of this is the remnant of the church growth gurus echoing in my head that […]

Maggi Dawn posted today a reflection on the process of birthing women into ministry that moved me. I wanted to leave the following comment on her site, but the space limitations of Haloscan wouldn’t let me. So here it is Maggi. Rev./Dr. Maggi, You are, of course, just a girl, with all the wonder and […]

Bob Carlton just sent me an email listing his favorite songs of summer, including the fact that Janet Jackson was his first concert. This set me thinking about my first concerts and my memories of summer songs. I have written about this before, but my first concert was at the ripe old age of 8 […]

Yesterday was a glorious day. James Cole and a bunch of his family invited us to join them on Center Hill Lake for the day. We drove up early and rented a pontoon boat and a jet ski for a day on the lake. Center Hill is a great lake — clean and quiet and […]

I’ve been really struggling the past few days to get the energy to write again. Oh, I’ve been doing the sermon thing — that monster never really goes away. It’s my other writing that has been a struggle — posts here, e-mail newsletters for the church, all those various and sundry things that filled my […]

I was hanging out in the Church of Fools for a few minutes where I came upon two folks from Nashville. One was a friend and former parishioner from my old church, and the other was an on-line friend of his from Madison. The funny thing was that the friend knew all about me from […]

I just chatted with the world famous Tall Skinny Kiwi in the Boaz Louge on the Habbo Hotel. Cool and fun technology, but the best part was him trying to get his 11 year old daughter to go to virtually go to bed. I could use a little dose of virtual parenting!

http://jayssermons.blogspot.com/2004/06/encountering-jesus-possessed-by-god.html