Holiness Reeducation

Many are saying that Europe has spent the past 100 years entering a post-Christian reality. The church in Europe, while still a strong cultural identifier, has lost its spiritual vitality in many places. The great cathedrals that remain of Christianity’s dominance in Europe now are mainly museums rather than houses of worship. The one time [...]

I declare the official end of the vacation portion of the summer. It is time to transition. In a bit I am picking Sophie up at the airport, and for the next 9 days until school starts my whole family will be in the same state. That is the longest we have been in the [...]

One of the buzz words in the church right now is missional. Lots of people are talking about being missional people, missional churches, missional denominations, and missional gardeners (okay I made that last one up). But what does it really mean to be missional and why is everyone talking about it so much. Many of [...]

Following Up on Nazarenes and Emergents There has been lots of good discussion on this post and on plenty of other blogs regarding the statement released by the Board of General Superintendents on the Emerging Church. Having had some time to really reflect on the statement and to read so many different comments on it, [...]

As a Nazarene pastor and someone who has participated for the better part of the last ten years in the emerging church conversation, I was really please yesterday to read the first official statement from the Board of General Superintendents (essentially our Bishops in the Nazarene World) regarding the emerging church. This statement was put [...]

Do I really have this much to say? I started blogging on February 14, 2006 and in the almost four years since I have now written 500 blog entries. That equates out to 125 a year or one about every three days. That is more discipline and consistency that my life has usually known, so [...]

Should the hour people are in worship on Sunday morning be the best hour of the week? It is a really interesting question when you stop and think about it. The question isn’t should it be a wonderful hour, or a refreshing or renewing time in God’s presence, the question is whether or not it [...]

In Dave Gibbons’ The Monkey and the Fish he talks extensively about the idea of us being third culture Christians. I have already posted a couple of reflections on what this means for us in the church here and here. One of the ways Dave tries to communicate the essence of third culture Christianity is [...]

Time to hit the ground running fast and furious today. Here are my predictions and thoughts for 2010. (These are almost all guaranteed to be wrong, but it is worth a shot. You know how Paul in his letters would sometimes say, now this is a word from me, God didn’t tell me this, well [...]

** This is the 2nd post in a series on the book The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons, find the 1st post here** That is a question I have asked myself for virtually my whole life. Why are there so many white people in my church? Growing up in the DC area we [...]