Debate: Up For Debate

I find that the value of debate for the church is debatable.
The church has two primary creeds to follow: love God and love one another. I wonder if debate by its very nature has a tendency to hinder the latter.  (Read up on the denotations of debate and you’ll see how we get some [...]

Below is a writing exercise that I had too much fun writing not to share it.  
If Eustace wasn’t known as a fool, he certainly was known as a clutz. All of his life he had mucked up everything: elementary school homework, scripture memorization, and even his first job milking cows. His mother still will [...]

Discarded

Stacked in rows of lonely crates, the black disc s press together in a jumbled mass. The box edges were a blurry bunch, never revealing where one gegan and the other ended. Cold wet rocks frowned upon the stack of black discs, condemning them to warps, mold, and eventual disintegration.

On a dusty old picnic table [...]

Someone Bigger Than Ourselves

I watched my leg grow longer while it rested in Russ’ hand and thought to myself, “My God,this is real.”
Christianity had been a ritual for most of my life: sit, stand, kneel, pray this, chew on a paper-life wafer, vote pro-life, and don’t use God’s name in vain unless you’re justifiably pissed. The spirit would [...]

Of Christ and Culture

While many Christians  never sit down and hammer out a specific construct for interacting with theology in a particular culture, the truth is that we all have a model of choice. Typically we find ourselves bobbing and weaving from one model to another based on the situation.
The  Bible can be so clear at times, [...]

We are embedded in culture. Now what?

I introduced my thoughts on culture by making my case that we are in fact embedded in culture and are severely limited when we try to break free of these limitations. Below are some thoughts on what we can do in the face of context complexities.
A recent interview with Miroslav Volf is worth a [...]

More Thoughts on Culture/Context

Excerpts from my section: "Why Christians Should Care About Culture"
History teaches us that our context has a lot
to do with how we think. Christianity does not exist apart from culture. Just
as Jesus was a Jew who thought like a Jew and the New Testament was written in
Greek by people who thought in Greek categories, Americans [...]

Discussing Culture: An Excerpt From Chapter One

As part of my Beginning Conversations project (see previous posts on this blog for the scoop on the scope of this book), I hope to make the book collaborative. I already have sent drafts of the manuscript out to Christians in various ministry positions and geographical locations in order to gather their comments. My desire [...]