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May 2017

May 21, 2017

The Megachurch Infection

The megachurch infection may lead to the eventual death of Christian connection, also known as...

May 20, 2017

Do We Want Tight Doctrinal Standards Or Do We Want To Follow Jesus?

After spending much of 2014 and 2015 visiting churches, I have become increasingly aware that people...

May 18, 2017

Hypocrisy, shame, politics and religion

Hypocrisy is the ultimate death blow, whether it be politics or religion. And in the...

April 2017

April 14, 2017

Darkness came over the whole land–and we prefer the darkness

As we repeatedly mend the curtain, as we reinforce the barrier with each stitch, we...

March 2017

March 16, 2017

Insurance for dummies and suggestions for the church

I've read most of it. All the analyses about the AHCA ("Trumpcare" or "Ryancare"), the...

February 2017

February 15, 2017

Help! Do we ignore, avoid, or confront evil?

Evil is often disguised in a subtle call to comfort, to security, to safety. It...

January 2017

January 27, 2017

The year everything broke

All of us live in the tensions between creation and re-creation. Nothing is stasis or...

January 04, 2017

Church: take notice–people are leaving and not coming back

We all know the church ship is rapidly sinking. What fascinates me about the United...

December 2016

December 20, 2016

The Brother printer, customer service and the church

Bissell vs Brother Customer service at its worst. Endless correspondence, multiple useless fixes, and a...

November 2016

November 03, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Popes then, celebrity pastors now?

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: When you were in Europe recently, did you learn anything while seeing...

October 2016

October 25, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Can I use the Bible to convince my friends to vote a certain way?

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: Religion has a very unifying effect on its followers. Is it even...

October 18, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Am I supposed to let someone hit me?

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: The Bible says to turn the other cheek when I am affronted....

October 10, 2016

The church then and today: the need to exclude defines us

Saturday was Sicily. We wandered in the small villages that Francis Ford Coppola inadvertently made...

October 07, 2016

Notes from a retired pastor, musings from cruisings: swans and emaciated Jesus

Luxury cruising: finding our bed strewn with rose petals and towel swans along with a...

October 04, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: how do you stop someone you think is going to do something bad?

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: What do you do if you know a person is going to...

September 2016

September 29, 2016

The strong woman problem for Evangelicals and Republicans

How do leading republicans feel about women? Try this one on for size: During the...

September 27, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Social media took over our minds!

We let social media take over our brains because we humans are, at our core, essentially...

July 2016

July 08, 2016

An evening of joy; a morning of tragedy: will we ever wake up?

We'd had the most joyful of afternoons. After two interminable weeks in a non-weight bearing...

June 2016

June 29, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Did Trump “accept Jesus into his heart?”

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: What does it mean that Donald Trump has accepted Jesus into his...

June 27, 2016

The sad necessity of abortion: how can the church lead the way?

The news hit early today: the Supreme Court struck down the law passed by the...

May 2016

May 19, 2016

Debating the mission statement: a revealing moment at General Conference

At about 5:10 pm on Thursday, May 19, the second to last day before GC...

May 11, 2016

24 Hours into General Conference: Sinking in the Graveyard of Procedural Stuff

The Rev. Don Underwood, at his sixth General Conference as delegate and his ninth overall,...

May 09, 2016

An Ancient Base, A Modern Overlay, the Christian Challenge, and General Conference

Shortly (actually not so shortly as my flight has just been delayed) I leave for...

April 2016

April 26, 2016

Secret Shame and Church Offering Plates: Let’s Talk about Money

"Viral" hardly describes what happened to this recent article in The Atlantic. It's called "The...

April 25, 2016

Our Interconnected and Tragically Divided World

The Interconnection On Sunday, two cousins, Gene (we'll call him Gene One) and Gene (Gene...

April 18, 2016

Toxic Christianity: Can Jesus Save Us From It?

Has Christianity turned toxic? I wish I could say that it hasn’t, that it is...

April 17, 2016

The State of Irreligion in the US

It's Sunday, around noon when I started writing. Have a houseful of guests--relatives of my...

March 2016

March 17, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Is Mainline the Opposite of Evangelical?

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: I grew up in an “evangelical—fundamental” Christian home. My recollection is that...

March 07, 2016

The Promiscuity of Nature Versus the Pristine Swimming Pool

I'm lucky enough to live in a house that has a pool in the backyard....

March 03, 2016

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: Lords Prayer and Wading Pool Theology

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: Why is the Catholic Lord’s Prayer different from the Protestant Lord’s Prayer? ...

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