I am a "head person." By that, I mean I'm always thinking or daydreaming or pondering or analyzing or wondering. It's just how I am, but by virtue of being that way I'm not always present in the moment or focused on what's happening around me. Taking photographs, however, forces me out of my head and into the moment.
The Cult of the Pastor
The danger...is when devotion to a pastor supersedes devotion to a church.
Focusing on Ourselves
What Jesus demonstrates here to the disciples is that it isn't our job to police the world in His name. If others are glorifying Christ - if others are doing good works in His name - Jesus' response is "Don't stop them." Don't hold people back. Don't intervene. Even if you think you can do it better. Even if you don't get it. Even if it's irritating. [Click title to read more.]
The Importance of Remembering Death
Our culture rarely deals intimately with death any more: we have cordoned it off, confined it to funeral homes and hospitals, done everything to keep it separate from us as we try to think up ways and means to evade the inevitable ourselves. But it wasn't always that way. And I suspect that in the interim, something has been lost.
The Forgotten Children
There are girls I think of often. One was my best friend as a child. In the third grade, we cut holes into trash bags and then put them on so we could be black horses, and pranced around in the yard neighing and pretending uncooked spaghetti was hay. She visited me all the time, … Continue reading The Forgotten Children
Book Review: Evangelism for the Rest Of Us: Sharing Christ Within Your Personality Style
Do you associate the word "evangelism" with handing out tracts, seeking out strangers with whom to share the plan of salvation, and "formulas" meant to explain or advertise the gospel to others? Do these methods seem alien, uncomfortable, or cold to you? If so, Mike Bechtle's Evangelism For the Rest of Us is a book you absolutely must read. [Click title to read more.]
A Little Perspective Is A Dangerous Thing
On a frightening level, I suspect that most of us are just deeply distracted day to day. That's why taking a step back is necessary. [Click title to read more.]
Beware of Third Person Perspective
As Christians, especially in this new age of what I can only call the corporate church, it's easy to reduce people to demographics. We talk about people as prospects, as "future growth," as communities, as "the unsaved" or "the lost." And to the ears of those outside the church - to the ears of those we are trying to reach - I wonder if our approach doesn't come across as occasionally dehumanizing, as though the church lives in pursuit of numbers and not souls. [Click title to read more.]
How To Be A Christian Online
As Christians, we tend to talk a lot about the Internet - what should and should not be accessible on it and how we should or should not handle that - but not about who we are on the Internet. In what ways does our faith inform our technology? Or, more to the point: how do we behave like Christians on the internet? [Click title to read more.]
Defining “Neighbor” Beyond Convenience
A lot of us have an idea in mind of who our "neighbors" ought to be. They are kind, benign people who live near us; they are sometimes homeless, but always grateful and quiet; they are people willing to accept our kindness and generally deserving of it. All too often, my neighbors are people it does not inconvenience me to love. [Click title to read more.]
Samaritan's Song 