Year: 2009

  • One Take On the Importance of the Quaker Practice of “Open Worship”

    Adrian Halverstadt, a Quaker pastor, asks this question on the QuakerQuaker forum boards: I have been thinking a lot about open worship these days. Many of the larger evangelical Friends churches no longer practice open worship in their big venues for many reasons. I guess I am searching for a contemporary definition of open worship…

  • Advent Message “Come Be Born in Us” (Luke 1:39-55)

    Today we are three weeks into the advent season preparing for Christ’s coming. Christmas, for Christians, is not simply a remembrance and celebration of history (though it is certainly that), it is more importantly a proclamation of reality. The father of Quakerism, George Fox, wrote in his journal of his present and personal experience of…

  • A Thought for Quakers on Change

    I am preparing my discussion for our Sunday morning meeting for worship and am thinking a lot about what Kester Brewin calls “wombs of the divine,” and creating the necessary space for something new to be born over time (See his book Signs of Emergence) It’s kind of a preference for evolution rather than revolution,…

  • Favorite Music of 2009

    Here’s a list of my favorite, or at least most listened to, albums from this past year. Elvis Perkins In Dearland Elvis Perkins in Dearland’s self-titled, second album arrived this year and it has been in constant rotation on the record player since it’s arrived. It is seriously one of our daughter’s favorite albums, she…

  • Let’s have an Amazon.com-free Christmas this year

    Recently on twitter I said something I’m sure lost me a few followers,  “Let’s make it an amazon free Christmas.” (Though I don’t doubt I say plenty of things on any given day that make people wonder why they associate with me!). But in either case, it’s true, let’s boycott Amazon and every other big…