Baseball and the Body of Christ

Leo Durocher once wrote, “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” I would add that baseball, like church, involves a community that you have to be a part of in order to gain understanding. To appreciate the beauty of the game of baseball, you have to learn to sit with it. You have to…

Death to straw men

Originally posted on John Meunier:
United Methodist Internet conversation is plagued by many logical fallacies. We invoke the slippery slope. We appeal to authority. We roll out the band wagon. The one that always comes to my mind first, though, is our rampant use of straw man arguments. This is so common that it almost appears…

The Social Justice Issue the UMC Doesn’t Want to Deal With

Imagine that there was a pre-natal test, commonly recommended by medical personnel, to identify children who would experience depression throughout their lives. Upon receiving a positive test, parents were counseled: You know, you might not want to go through with this pregnancy.  You’re headed down a very difficult path. You may very well see your…

Preaching Atonement

“In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor 5:19). This is one of the most well known passages of Christian scripture. It is also one of the most puzzled-over. Atonement is a particularly knotty theological matter. While the…

Why is preaching so hard?

I’m preaching this morning. Granted, I don’t preach all the time. I speak publicly quite often, but preaching is different. I can give an hour-long lecture on a research topic as a matter of course. Putting together a twenty-minute sermon, however, is something I have always found very difficult. After some reflection, I’ve decided the reason…

Why Churchgoers Must (Really) Change

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2…

A Mainliner Hangs Around with Charismatics

I recently attended Global Awakening’s Voice of the Prophets conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was a gathering of about 1,300 people who believe in and want to learn more about modern day prophecy. Prophecy certainly wasn’t the only gift of the Spirit on display, though prophetic words were abundant. While I have worshipped with many different…

Praying for my church

I spent a few days with a group of Christians who were not United Methodists recently, and I came to an important realization: the UMC has exhausted me. I love my tradition, but it has exhausted me. Issues that I most care about–ministry with people with disabilities, theological readings of the Bible, catechesis, theological anthropology, and…