Following the endless conversations about “what comes next?” in The United Methodist Church, it becomes more and more apparent that most of the suggestions, reports and recommendations made thus far are all designed for just one purpose: to avoid the hard work that actually must happen. In my humble opinion […]
Pick up a ball, toss it in the air, catch it. Take two balls and toss them one at a time, catch them. So far, so good. Very few dropped balls. Take a third and juggle them. With practice, you become sure-handed and drop very few. But what about four […]
From the Gospel According to Bob, 28:16-20: Then Jesus sayeth unto them, “Go, invite people to come sitteth for an hour in church once every six weeks or so, telling them that very little will be expected of them, that they will heareth good music and that there will be coffee and snacks.” […]
Okay, so we don’t really mean it when we say our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. That’s too hard — too demanding. We don’t want anything that might make us break a sweat. We want easy church — nothing that will […]
What in God’s name do we think we are doing? If I hear one more prominent church leader define discipleship as going to church I will scream. We aren’t going to count the number of people who attend church anymore. Some genius decided we will count “disciples” in worship. What? […]
Have you noticed the mammoth chip some United Methodists have on their shoulder? Just mentioning it makes some people mad. I’ve received eight nasty emails since yesterday, when I posted the not-too-profound concept that anger is a choice and that no one else can offend us; we can merely choose […]
A few year’s ago I noticed an interesting trend. As Christians reported giving less and less time to prayer, the sale of books about prayer increased dramatically. For me, this is a simple illustration of a continuing dilemma — we are more interested in spirituality than we are in being […]
Praise God from whom all blessings flow… But who deserves such blessing? The poor? Immigrants (especially those illegal ones!)? The sick (who can’t afford health care)? Anyone who disagrees with me on any of my core beliefs? There is a weird paradox at work when it comes to our views […]
At what point do we finally wake-up to the fact that there is no such thing as a lasting, transformative “quick-fix?” We have suffered through over 50 years of “church-in-box” programs that have produced poor results at best. Disciple Bible Study came closest to delivering transformation, but ultimately “popular” did […]
By our fruits we will be known. What’s that smell? Why all the flies? What a waste. The rotten fruit of the Spirit is this: conditional love, repressed joy, fake peace, pretended patience, niceness passing as kindness, generosity to those who “deserve” it, narrow-minded faith-fullness, passive-aggressive gentleness, and demanding others […]
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