Holiness Reeducation

(This is the fourth post in a series examining the thoughts of Deep Church by Jim Belcher. Jim has written this book in an effort to offer a Third Way beyond the Emerging and Traditional Churches and the increasing divide between the two) The most frequent charge I hear against the emerging church, leveled especially [...]

For a month at the box office John Cusack has been working to save his family from the world wide apocalypse of 2012 rightly predicted by the end of the Mayan calendar and some New Age scholars. It certainly makes for a great movie trailer with Cusack driving his RV through Yellowstone as the whole [...]

For the past week or two, through out conversation about bridging the gap between emergents and traditionalists there has been a lot of talk of understanding orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is simply right belief. We are orthodox in the church if we believe the right things. The question of course is what are the right things and [...]

In an effort to bridge the gap between emergents and traditionalists, Jim Belcher offers a third way that while addressing many of the important questions of the emerging church still reaffirms the orthodox beliefs of our faith and allows us to celebrate our unity and benefit from our diversity instead of splintering ourselves into a [...]

Is there something about being a Christian that makes us believe the worst about each other?   That seems to be an antithetical description of what it means to be a Christian but our behavior makes it appear to be a naturally occurring Christian characteristic. The more I participate in dialogs between those engaging with [...]

Are those in the emergent church simply true Protestants, protesting against failures in the church and seeking to rebuild and reboot the traditional church? That is the first question that Jim Belcher looks at in his efforts to define the emerging church. Belcher tries to nail down some specific areas of protest that have defined [...]

Here are my precious kids. We had a great photo shoot with Chris Klimek from our church who is a burgeoning photographer, on Saturday. We were outside unfortunately and as Logan would try to smile his bottom lip would just be trembling from the deep freeze. I already had to scrape my windows a couple [...]

For those of you who aren’t Nazarenes (i.e. when someone says Entire Sanctification you stare at them blankly), who haven’t lived your life as part of the peculiar brand of Evangelical Christianity of which I find myself a part (i.e. you don’t have a closet full of Caravan badges, Bible Quizzing trophies, or back issues [...]

I am not sure if there is a theological term for it, but most pastors I know experience what I call an Easter hangover. Yesterday I could hardly function. I took two naps. But that is a beautiful feeling, having left everything you are on in a moment of celebration and worship. Every week should [...]

Betraying our Faith to find Faithfulness Peter Rollins has written a thought provoking book called The Fidelity of Betrayal. In the book Rollins looks at the nature of the word of God and the story of God’s people contained in it and asks us to reconsider some ideas we may have about both. This is [...]