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’
Featured What is the Quaker Peace Testimony? Here are my notes from Sunday’s sermon. This month we are discussing what is now known as the Quaker peace testimony, but was, interestingly, called the testimony against war, up until about the turn of the 20th century. This morning were going to have a small group discussion
Featured 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
Featured Advent Message “Come Be Born in Us” (Luke 1:39-55) Today we are three weeks into the advent season preparing for Christs 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
Church in Mission 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
The Cultural 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
Featured 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’
The Cultural Dowd on (Role) Modeling I came across this today while I was doing some back reading from this weekend’s newspaper. It struck me as really insightful: After the baseball steroid scandal and the disappointing news that Tigers a cheetah, as the New York Post headline put it, its time to accept
The Cultural ‘Dont Buy It’ – Slam Poetry from the Climate Camp for OneClimate.net Came across this today while reading Jarrod McKenna’s post on climate change over at the sojo blog. The poem is really intense and has that prophetic edge we aren’t real comfortable with but I think it’s worth watching and considering. His message also resonates wtih Rev. Billy’
Blog Entries Home From a Retreat at the Beach This past Friday I gave a bit of a cry-for-help and have been feeling under a lot of pressure lately given my schooling, job, and the recent (beautiful) events in our lives. So what better time to take a retreat and do nothing?! This past weekend our church has scheduled
Blog Entries Finding God in the Chaos? With the new baby having arrived, working on a final paper for my methods course this quarter, having been sick for a week, signing for the title of our new house, plus all the regular things we do this past couple weeks have been, to say the least, chaotic. While
Featured Our Own Mini Advent: Baby Daniels #2 Arrives! As most of you know by now, thanks (or no thanks) to my facebook and twitter, we’ve had our baby. In keeping with the trend of announcing big life transitions here I wanted to let you all know that my wife Emily gave birth to our daughter this past
Blog Entries Organizing Ministry in DevonThink Pro [This is a tutorial on software I use for writing and organization.] When I started pastoring I created a DEVONthink database for all things ministry oriented ((See my other posts on DTP here and here). I personally use a handful of databases regularly to help me keep things organized: academics,
Church in Mission Cancel Our Debts? In my reading of the Disciple’s Prayer (the anabaptist/Quaker name for the Lord’s Prayer), we have to make sure that we dont limit what forgiveness includes ((See part 3, part 2, and part 1)). Our (Western) tendency is to think of forgiveness in terms of personal
Featured We All Know That Reality has a Well-Known “Conservative” Bias One of the things my favorite (fake) newscaster Stephan Colbert says on a regular bias is that “Major media has a well-known liberal bias.” And this is definitely something many people believe. This perspective has cropped up again recently all over the web, and yes on The Colbert Report has
Blog Entries Freedom Friends Church Faith and Practice Freedom Friends Church in Salem Oregon is currently an independent meeting that has recently written their own Faith and Practice. A number of Friends, Monthly Meetings and Yearly Meetings, have been interested in reading about this unique meeting and some of the practices they espouse. I have done a decent
The Theological Old Quaker Discipline on the Poor While I was researching for a recent sermon I came across some great quotes on poverty from 18th Century Quakers. One thing I loved was that the section on plainness and living an unfettered life is right next to the section about caring for the poor. These two things, how
Blog Entries Check Out The Kingdom Experiment (Book Review) I recently subscribed to the new magazine Generate, which I highly recommend for all of you in church ministry and thinking about alternative, ’emerging’ ways of ministry. It is a great magazine (first one just came out this fall). I read through the whole thing in an evening I enjoyed
Featured Confession: The Prayer of Vulnerability (Matthew 6:12-13) My first six months of youth ministry were a bear. The church I served in had three kinds coming to the youth group when I arrived, one was the pastors son and the other two were the daughters of the previous youth leader. But building a youth group from
Blog Entries Chesterton and the (il)logic(ality) of life. Just stumbled across this in my reading this morning, it works well with what I’m reflecting on with “confession as vulnerability,” confession is what keeps us open and subject to change. Here Chesterton says it well: “Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.” The
Blog Entries A Common Trashcan at Camas Friends This past Sunday we piled new and gently used items for homeless people in Camas into a new galvanized trashcan I picked up from the local hardware shop here in Camas. We did this as a part of our discussion on the Disciples Prayer and the petition/mission Give
Green Food, Inc. Documentary on Where Our Food Comes From (Review) The tag line for FOOD, inc. is “You’ll never look at your dinner the same way again,” and well, they’re right. This for some of you may be the very reason why you decide in advance to not watch it, or to not read the rest of this
Featured Eat. Enough. Give. (Matthew 6:11) This is the sermon on the Disciple’s Prayer from Sunday morning. This morning we step foot inside the second strand of the Disciples prayer, the ethics strand, the strand that gives us guidance on how we are to live in the day to day. We see that even
The Theological An Old Mennonite Rendering of The Disciple’s Prayer I came across this old Mennonite rendering of the Disciple’s Prayer and love it. Abba Father God, Bless your holy name. Let your reign come now, Let your desires be carried out. Bring your peace to birth, As in heavn, so on Earth Give us bread, daily; Free
Featured Dive! The Film: A Review of Jeremy Seifert’s Documentary on Dumpster Diving At Camas Friends Church, we’ve been doing a monthly film and discussion group we’re calling “Last Sundays for the Earth.” The purpose of the event is to watch a film, or have a person come in and facilitate a discussion, around issues in sustainable living (and what we
