Gathering In Light

Blog Entries

Oscar Romero on The Protagonists of History

I’ve been reading through excerpts of Oscar Romero’s prayers and writings and many  strike me but this one really stood out to me this morning as one we need to hear today: The true protagonists of history are those who are most united with God, because with God’

Blog Entries

The Community of the Holy Spirit: The Birth of a Diverse Church (Sermon)

This past Sunday was Pentecost Sunday and for someone who spent his high school years in a Charismatic church, I know the day fairly well. It proved to play another significant role in my spiritual autobiography as it was also the day of my first sermon as pastor of Camas

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We Too Need an “I’m Sorry Day”: Concerning the Recent Abortion Murder

Jarrod McKenna’s posted on the God’s Politics Blog about the “I’m Sorry Day” Australian’s celebrate every year as a remind that “there is no future without confessing and seeking to heal the pain of the genocide of Aboriginal peoples and the evils that created the ‘stolen

Blog Entries

First Sunday At Camas Friends

Last Tuesday we landed at our new house in Camas Washington.  I came by car with our good friend James LaCroix, and Emily and L arrived by airplane. Fortunately enough, all our things transported by ABF U-Pack It also arrived on Tuesday mostly undamaged.  We spent the week unpacking, getting

Blog Entries

GiL Video: Road Trip To Camas Memoir #1

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4708818&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=FEF52D&fullscreen=1 Road Trip Memoir #1 from wess on Vimeo. I’m on the way to Camas Washington with our good friends

The Cultural

(Untitled)

My friend Rhett Smith asked me on twitter yesterday where he should start if he wanted to get into some of Žižek’s writings. There are a few different places to start because he has such a huge corpus and covers a variety of topics. For instance the different

Green

GiL Video: Resistance and Simplicity: Reflections On Swimming Upstream

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4468240&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=FEF52D&fullscreen=1 Resistance and Simplicity from wess on Vimeo. In this video I discuss some of the questions I have around using

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Mind the Fire, Fan the Flame: A Message of Hope for Quakers

I’m currently digging through my research on Freedom Friends Church and found a blog post Liz Opp wrote awhile back that got my attention. In the post Liz talks about hearing Peggy (FFC’s pastor) and Alivia (Clerk of the meeting) present on their church. She makes some useful

Church in Mission

Immigration and May Day

The May Marches are just about to take place and I just received an email with an image seeking to raise awareness around the complex social issues and injustices surrounding immigration in this country. There are a number of pictures by Shepard Fairey dealing with this issue of “Immigration Reform

Church in Mission

Denominations and Traditions: Thoughts on Differences

“To stand within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge, but makes it possible.” Hans Georg Gadamer Today I spent a few hours working on my Mid-Program defense for my PhD program, I will be presenting it to my committee on May 14th. This entails laying out the

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GIL Video: A Few Thoughts On Forms of Worship

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4311899&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=FEF52D&fullscreen=1 Here are a few thoughts I decided to video record instead of write about given the lack of time I

Blog Entries

The House Hunt and other Adventures

Last Saturday we flew up to Portland Airport and picked up our rental car and traveled down to Salem Oregon. We celebrated resurrection Sunday with our friends at Freedom Friends Church. Freedom Friends is the semi-programmed meeting I am doing ethnographic research on for my fifth tutorial. It have been

Blog Entries

A Good Friday Parable

Brother Maynard posted this the other day and I wanted to follow suite. This is a parable of the last super written by Peter Rollins and is found is his new book due to come out in a couple weeks. It is evening, and you are gathered together with the

Church in Mission

Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls: The Church in 25 years

Scott McClellan emailed me a couple weeks back and asked me to imagine what The church might be like in 25 years and write it in 150-300 words: It’s for an upcoming article for Collide Magazine (a magazine largely dealing with church and new media, an emphasis you will

Blog Entries

New Fuller Seminary Bloggers Wiki

A couple years ago I started keeping a list of all the Fuller bloggers here on my site. Some bloggers I knew about and others were invited to add their links to the page by sending me an email. Well the list continues to grow and seems to remain a

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Christian Nonviolence: An Incomplete List of Recources on Biblical Pacifism

Rhett asked me today about books I’ve found helpful on the subject of Christian nonviolence, which reminded me that I had planned on doing a post about some of my favorite books on the subject for quite some time. Here’s a list of books I recommend on the

Blog Entries

Long Reach Toward Just Peacemaking: Fuller’s Theology, News and Notes

I want to commend to you the latest Fuller Theology News and Notes, a magazine that comes out bi-annually and is edited by a Fuller professor. This issue was edited by ethcist Glenn Stassen and is called the Long Reach Toward Just Peacemaking. The issue has a number of great

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The Kingdom Call and Practice of Resistance

I have been thinking a lot about “practices of resistance” lately, not just the theology and philosophy behind this but also how to incorporate them into my routines more. So over the next few posts I want to try and develop some thoughts around this as well as explain a

The Theological

Discussions on Plurality 2.0

Adam Walker Cleveland, the author of Pomomusings.com, is conducting a series of guest posts on his site around the subject of pluralism called Plurality 2.0 and I have a guest piece on the subject today. Here’s what he writes about the series: I think issues of pluralism,

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Blogging as Ministry in A Virtual World

Quaker blogger Robin Mohr has written a really thoughtful post, if you are interested in ministry in a web 2.0 culture this is a must read essay. Here are the three key points she brings up and then a few I add to the list: For me, the first

Blog Entries

Dress-Down Friday | The Llama Report

This is a special edition of Dress-Down Friday. When I was youth pastor of Barberton Friends Youth Group (BFYG) we did lots of silly things. One thing we did was to make a Llama our mascot whose (fictional) name was Bach Bahama Llama. We had youth group baseball shirts printed

Blog Entries

(Untitled)

I saw this today on my favorite fan site rushmore academy and it made me really happy. It didn’t hurt that L really likes this book, and that Arcade Fire’s song “Wake Up,” from their album Funeral, is playing in the background really helps too. [youtube=http://www.

Blog Entries

Counsel to the Christian Traveller – Put Your Hand to the Plow

A while back when we were at the Convergent Friends weekend I got a copy of “Counsel to the Christian-Traveller: Also Meditations and Experiences” by William Shewen. It is an early Quaker text that was originally published in London in 1683, Shewen was among the early prominent London Friends. He

Blog Entries

Dress-Down Friday | Three Vimeos and an Alien-Baby Suit

Here are a couple little internet treats for you all on this Dress-Down Friday. For those of you who are into the alien-baby accessorized look: This video is really just amazing: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3156959&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=

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Re-Entering the Ministry As Camas Friends New Pastor

I have felt called to ministry ever since I was in high school. I remember, at one point, my youth pastor telling me he’d like to go with me to the downtown where we lived, soap-box in hand and let me have at it. Things have in some ways