(LOTS of stuff today. I’ll try breaking into little pieces in separate posts.)
One of the major points Miroslav makes in Exclusion and Embrace is this–God demonstrated profound love to human beings through Jesus’ death. As the Apostle Paul said, “while we were still enemies, Christ died for us.” Because of this, we too, as followers [...]

Posted in bible/theology, church thoughts, quaker, volf conversation 1 Comment »

As you obviously noticed from the previous blog picture posts, this trip has already been outstanding…FOUR LICENSE PLATES ALREADY, PEOPLE! And, for the rest of you interested in my astute observations on mundane life, I’ve been musing about how weird it is to be three time zones away from the people you love the most. [...]

Posted in NFC, church thoughts, comedy attempts, quaker, seminary memories, volf conversation 3 Comments »

(Some of you will have seen this before…sorry. It’s been published in two places. But Robin’s comment on my last post asked some questions about my view on women, so I thought I’d regurgitate this for the blog.)
I sighed as I climbed the stairs in the stately library on the Fuller Theological Seminary campus. Entering [...]

Posted in bible/theology, church thoughts, quaker, seminary memories 4 Comments »

A week ago Wednesday, a man from our church took me to lunch, and we met with the man’s previous pastor.
This same man had taken Elaine and me to visit this pastor’s mega church last September, and I had written it off as a typical “get everybody in the building” seeker-type service. I was less [...]

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Ok, so imagine this: our entire pastoral team, after Tuesday’s team meeting, goes to the Golden Leaf for Thai food. In a freak accident, we are all killed because they garnished with arsenic instead of curry.
What would happen at NFC?
Would all the people suddenly rise up, and all of a sudden take complete responsibility for [...]

Posted in NFC, church thoughts, finding myself, leadership 15 Comments »

At NFC, we’ve held to the “every service the same” mantra for over 15 years, because we say we don’t want to split into little homogenous groups. We’ve said we want diversity (by which we primarily are speaking about generational diversity…our racial and socioeconomic diversity isn’t all that huge), because we’ve said we want to [...]

Posted in NFC, church thoughts 3 Comments »

By the way, I ought to give credit to someone for starting me (again) down this road of reconsidering preaching. Bob Hyatt, who I got to actually meet in person, who generously offered to meet for coffee and I haven’t yet taken him up on it, has been blogging about churches with video venues [...]

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My confession? I like to preach. In fact, there are times like the last two Sundays where I feel like it’s part of what I was born to do. I love speaking the truth that God is present. I love, absolutely love, when I can speak about God’s unending, unconditional love for us.
Why is that [...]

Posted in NFC, church thoughts, finding myself 14 Comments »

(Bob will hate this post; Star Trek is up there with Journey in his book. But, AJ might like it, or at least her dad.)
There’s this moment in Star Trek: First Contact that I remembered the other day. The whole crew of the Enterprise E has gone back in time to stop the Borg baddies [...]

Posted in bible/theology, church thoughts, quaker 15 Comments »

I’m finishing up preparations for tomorrow (covering why world missions is essential in just 5 minutes is not an easy task). Digging through notes from seminary, I found something pretty amazing. It was from a class that didn’t particularly stand out at the time as earth-shattering, called “Biblical Foundations for Missions” by Chuck Van Engen. [...]

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