Featured

A collection of 523 posts

Featured

Thinking About Goals for 2011

I’ve been thinking about what my goals are for this coming year. I don’t know if these would constitute “resolutions,” I’ve never been big on those, but here is what I have so far. I want to: 1. Accomplish less. This past year was crammed jammed full

Featured

All My Favorite People Are Grieving

This morning we did a worship and prayer service around making “peace with loss.” Through prayers, songs, silence and the lighting of candles we remembered the many who have lost loved ones in the past year, and considered those who have suffered loss in other ways as well. In some

Church in Mission

Creating Communities of “Artists”

This morning I noticed a torn piece of paper with something I’d written on it from awhile back: * How do we form a community that creates artists rather than just critics? * Justice should always come first, justice is innovative. I am not sure what I was reading when I

Featured

Lineage, Belt Buckles and the BIG US. (Matthew 1:1-25)

Here’s my sermon from December 19th. This morning is the fourth and final week of advent. We have travelled long and far in our discussion this advent season, and hopefully some of the ideas, stories and experiences you have had thus far have been meaningful, maybe even transformative, to

Featured

Year-End Wrap-Up and Popular Posts from 2010

This has been a pretty good year for Gathering In Light (as a blog) and it’s always fun to do a little year-end wrap up. For one, I’m surprised to see that I had 150 or so posts this year. Considering how much seemed to have happened this

Featured

From Hearing to Seeing: Matt. 11

Interestingly, the act of hearing is initially stressed in Matthew 11:2ff: 2 When John heard in prison what the Messiah* was doing, he sent word by his* disciples 3and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? John sends

Featured

The Question: John the Baptist’s “Are you the One?” Matt. 11

Here are some thoughts from a portion of my message this past Sunday on Matt. chapter 11. In Matthew chapter 11  we find John again sending his disciples out (as he did in Matt. 9) to get a little scouting report on Jesus. This time John is in prison because,

Featured

Book Giveaway: Three Copies of Spirit Rising: Young Quaker Voices

I don’t know about you but I love free books! So, in the spirit of Christmas I wanted to gift three people with a copy of the book I helped edit and love to share around. The book was published this year by Quaker Press and has been well

Featured

Seeing Beyond What We See

At Camas Friends we are thinking about advent season and how it is connected to our sense of sight this year. Here’s something short I’ve written about it: This advent season we are invited to see the movements of grace all around us. The Christian tradition has for

Featured

Escapism and Citizenship on the Web

The web has been a good place to me. I have formed many meaningful relationships over the web, I have maintained long distance ones, and I have had the opportunity to be a part of a variety of ministry, as well as academic, events because of it. Many of these

Featured

More Detailed Information for Quaker Heritage Day

February 12-13 I will be in Berkeley (at Berkeley Friends Church) discussing some of my favorite topics with anyone who wants to join us. The series of talks is currently being called “Heralding The New Creation: Mission as Participation in the Quaker Tradition” and in it investigate the renewal of

Featured

Thanksgiving and Irony

Here’s the message I gave this past Sunday. I am not going to be posting my sermons online as much as I have been in the past but since our recording software for the podcast had a major breakdown this last week I thought I’d put this here

Featured

Being A “Released” Minister

I recently went through and changed most of my online profiles, email signatures, and even our bulletin for Sunday morning it from “pastor” to “released minister” as that language seems to fit where I am at better. So now, at least on paper, that’s the language I use to

Featured

If You Can’t Go Over It, then…

One of L’s favorite books, and if we’re being completely honest mine as well, is “We’re Going On A Bear Hunt.” It’s a great adventure story that begs to be interacted with, the pitter-patter of hands on your legs for running, the squishy sounds for mud,

Featured

There is No Time for Weeping (Jeremiah 8)

I thought I would post what I would have said, if I would have preached the other day. (Given that please forgive the very unpolished nature of this piece). The love of a Parent is powerful. For instance, the other night L came running into our room balling. Now typically,

Featured

Brent Bill: A Modest Proposal – For the Revitalization of the Quaker Message in the United Staes

Brent Bill, Quaker, author, convergent Friend, and all around good guy, is beginning a series on his blog that I am really looking forward to. In it he’s going to be looking at what the Quaker message is for today. I admitted that I had some interest in the

Featured

Creatures are not Machines

Wendell Berry, in an essay within his book Life is a Miracle (53ff), writes about the persistent problem of some analogizing humans with machines. You don’t have to look far for examples or remarks about the human mind being like a computer chip, or people being talked about as

Featured

Spoiled and Reworked (Jeremiah 18:1-11)

(This is the message portion of what I shared on Sunday that follows a story I wrote. This message comes from Jeremiah 18:1-11.) We in the middle of discussing various passages from the book of Jeremiah, asking what do these old stories have to teach us? Are there new

Featured

The Two Cobblers

A long time ago in an old village there was a cobbler named Samuel. Tall and thin, his dark hair had begun to turn the slightest shade of gray, like an early winter dusting of frost on the ground. Samuel came from a long line of cobblers. His father, grandfather

Church in Mission

Bored at Worship?

I came across this post awhile ago and have been meaning to link to it. In the post Skye discusses bordem in our worship services, not just from the typical congregant but also the pastor. He also comments on that article that’s been pretty popular online about “Hipster Christianity.

Featured

All We Grow (Jeremiah 2:4-13)

This is the message I gave on Sunday. Opening_ What are we growing? There’s a new album that recently came out titled “All We Grow,” by S. Carey. While I actually really like the music on the album, I found the title to be compelling enough. The first time

Featured

Unscheduled Time

Over the last week I’ve had a number of appointments cancel on me or just not show up. It’s only weird because it has happened with the last four meetings in a row and it is something that usually doesn’t happen. I keep wondering, along with the

Featured

The Testimony of Witness

This is my sermon from Sunday. If you’d like a little background to this, you can check out yesterday’s post “In Search of a New Frame for Evangelism and Mission.” This is my attempt at an initial response to the questions I raised there. Opening Queries For Discussion:

Church in Mission

In Search of a New Framework for Evangelism and Mission

One of the things I have become fascinated with over the course of the last decade falls  broadly under the umbrella known as missiology, or the study of Christian missions. I like many of you have a history with big ‘E’ Evangelicalism where mission is generally understood as “winning souls

Featured

Those It Is Acceptable to Hate

This summer some of us from our church meet every other week to discuss a query dealing with some issue related to things happening around the world. A few weeks back we talked about a query dealing with the oil spill and how it is or is not affecting us,