Six Months Quaker Preacher - Gathering In Light (Page 3)

Gathering In Light

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Six Months Quaker Preacher

A collection of 68 posts

On Earth As it is in Heaven

This is the last week for peace month at Camas Friends even though January officially ended a couple days ago. I thought why not extend it just a little longer so we can focus on making peace with the earth? To get things started off properly I decided to take

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Feeding Sheep With Steady Diets of This and That

I’ve missed a few days of posting for my series (I try to post on the days I work) but I’m back on it. I last wrote about my full weekend, and was it ever full?! Here are a few highlights. I was approved to be on the

Six Months Quaker Preacher

A Full Weekend Ahead

I had the best intentions of writing a post about yesterday, but I was just too exhausted and went to bed after watching my favorite “fake news” shows. This morning I’m headed out to our Mid-Year Boards for the Yearly Meeting where I have been put on our leadership

Homeless in Our Town?

Since high school I have been drawn to ministry among the poor. Part of it was because we grew up poor (at least compared to those around us, we weren’t on the street or anything). And part of it was because I felt like I could identify with people

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Decompressing

Yesterday was a day on the run. My feet didn’t stop moving until sometime after 9pm last night and L was finally asleep. When I sat down, I felt like I was still moving, and my mind was jogging at a pace I couldn’t keep up with (which

The Final Word?

I got into an interesting discussion today with a gentleman after our meeting for worship about unprogrammed Quakers. He said he had heard “Silent” worship described by someone (a non-Quaker) as similar to a séance and wondered if the practice really is non-Christian. I think it’s a fair question.

Six Months Quaker Preacher

An Unexpected Turn (in Antwerp)

It’s been a hectic week so today was the day for sermon writing. I often like to have it written on Thursday so I can use Friday as a day to rework and tweak what I’ve written or as a day for meetings, and working on other articles

Conversion(s) a

As of late, I’ve been wrestling with the whole idea of conversion. I grew up going to Catholic mass, going to Catholic schools, learning the Catholic way. I never spent much time thinking about conversion in this context, partially because I was young (I stopped attending Catholic-everything after 8th

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Take Thought for What is Noble/Beautiful in The Sight of All

Today was somewhat of a typical day for me. I did a bunch of office work this morning, answering emails, going through mail, organizing paperwork and I also watched a number of tutorials on the Bible software I use for working on my sermons. Later in the day I spent

The Theological

The Power (and Difficulty) of Forgiveness

Of the many things to be considered today the thing that stands out to me as I sit down to write this is the film we watched this evening called “The Power of Forgiveness.” Four of us from our meeting traveled to St. Luke’s Episcopal in downtown Vancouver to

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Bookface and The Internet Cafe

Today we had our meeting for worship and I spoke on Hospitality based in Romans 12:9-13. Afterward we did a our second “Internet Cafe,” something I made sure to name in a way that would signal my favorite things: the web, food and coffee. This is something we started

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Meeting People Is Easy

One thing I love about my job is meeting new people, and subsequently, meeting with people. I love hearing other people’s stories, their ideas and convictions. And, as is fairly obvious, I love to share my own ideas and passions with people too. Every meeting invites the opportunity to

The Call of Hospitality (Doesn’t Need to be long)

This Sunday we’re talking about hospitality and peace. I’m pulling from Romans 12:3-13 but especially the very last line from v. 13 “extend hospitality to strangers.” Hospitality is not only one of my favorite themes in Scripture, but in theological and philosophical writings as well. While I

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Being Educated in Life and Death

I was way too tired last night to post about the day, so here’s for Wednesday. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here or not but I’ve been meeting with a woman in hospice for the past few months. I met her back in the

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Second Tuesdays With the Elders

This evening we had our elder’s meeting. We have five elders, three women and two men, plus myself and the clerk of the meeting, who usually attends but doesn’t have to. We have a great age range, swath of life experiences, different experiences of God and a panorama

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Mondays are For Practicing Taking Time Off

I have a hard time winding down. My mind is usually juggling a number of things all at once: replaying a conversation over here, working on my sermon over there, considering this or that idea for school on this side, and thinking about what needs done at home over on

Six Months Quaker Preacher

Six Months With a Quaker Preacher Project

As you may have noticed it’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged with much passion, or interest. This isn’t necessarily a problem, things like this come and go, and in the grand scheme of things this blog is inconsequential. Where it becomes a concern for me

Six Months Quaker Preacher

A Memorial Service

Today I did my second memorial service as the pastor at Camas Friends. The first was just a couple months ago and was for a lady I’d never met. But this time it was different. It was for the husband of one of our long-time attenders. He himself hadn’