I read an article this last week that says our Council of Bishops approved a plan to make The United Methodist Church ten-year’s younger in a decade. I thought, “That can’t be right.” Just doing the math, we would need 70% of our existing over-50 membership to die or go […]
An email I received today asked a question I am frequently asked, “How could someone who distrusts and dislikes statistics as much as you do have been a researcher for over a decade?” The short answer to this is that it’s not that I don’t like statistics — I LOVE them, […]
Stephen King wrote a novella entitled, The Running Man, about a brutal futuristic society where game shows and public executions were combined to produce the ultimate reality show. Prisoners were given the opportunity to try to escape death — on national TV — by facing unexpected and unimaginable challenges. The […]
The United Methodist Judicial Council has adjudicated the “homosexuality question” for the denomination by deeming the Baltimore-Washington attempt to reframe and redeem the gay-lesbian-bi-transgender issue “out-of-order.” The claim is that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Okay, fine, I accept that — but only if we’re consistent. The ordination of […]
We’re old. We’re dying. We’re decaying. We’re declining. We’re ineffective. We’re irrelevant. Doesn’t that motivate you to do better? Come on, be honest. Don’t such messages just fill you with energy, vigor, passion and hope? Sure they do, otherwise why would we dwell so constantly upon them? Why waste time […]
There are times when Christians drive me absolutely nuts. One way this happens is when I hear well-meaning and sincere Christians confuse faith and superstition, relying on prayer as a magical talisman or incantation. I listened to a United Methodist colleague share recently that he no longer prays because it […]
Two recent conversations stick with me and stand in stark contrast to my understanding of the church. Now, my understanding may be completely wrong, so take what I say with a grain of salt. My personal belief is that the church exists to serve in the world — that we […]
As I prepare to preach on All Saints day, three things come to mind. First, of course, I think of all those significant people who helped to shape my life and faith. I think of my mother’s simple faith — she didn’t want to think too deeply about it, and […]
It always amazes me when fairly modern interpretations of scripture are represented as “traditional” or “ancient.” Most moralizing uses of scripture are as recent as the Victorian era (1837~1901), and many date back to the Puritan era (1550s~1660s) but almost none have anything to do with their original meaning. Most of our Hebrew […]
I attended a session a few year’s ago at a Christian Educator’s Fellowship meeting where the leader talked about the importance of “good content, good topics, and good technique.” She delivered a very compelling vision of the task of teaching — organized, exacting, and precise. I went to another workshop […]
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