I attended the CCDA conference in St. Louis this past week (thus the brief blog hiatus). It was an incredible conference and a very encouraging experience. I didn’t do much in the way of notes and things, so I don’t have a lot to post for you. However, I did find some old CCDA video on youtube, and this one from Wayne Gordon is right on. It’s about the often misquoted passage, “The poor will always be among you.”
The video is 40+ minutes long, but just listen to the first …

When Jesus stepped down from the Judges seat and took the punishment meant for us, we said Thank you and picked up the discarded robe and sat down in Jesus’ temporarily abandoned seat.-Keane

Dear Greg (or Gary, sorry I can’t remember) and others,
I met you briefly at Peavey Park in South Minneapolis last Wednesday. I was hanging out with some punk-rocker anarchist folk, eating dinner with homeless and having an all-around good time. You came by and politely offered us flyers to an event for youth you were having in October. You were kind and cordial and I appreciated listening to the conversation between some church-goers and anarchist, two groups I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with that tend to have some nearly polar …

This is more question time for the readers then me giving answers.
In a discussion at the house the other day, and a couple email conversations with some readers, I’ve started to rethink what topics, facts, concepts, etc. are essential to the Gospel.
There’s all kinds of cliches and sayings about the gospel: “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” There’s all kinds of things we spend far too much time talking about and others we simply neglect. So, take a minute to think about this. I’m wondering, …

There was quite a bit of conversation last week after I posted about the benevolent act of Philip Workman, a man executed in Tennessee last week for murder. The initial comments put me deep in thought and I’ve been trying to think through my values and ethics and trying to make sure I’m not holding double standards. This is not a direct response to those comments, but it was provoked by those thoughts. Today, I simply wanted to write a brief devotional thoughts post about some of the heroes of …

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store …

The name Se7en might be cheesy, more so maybe because it was a complete rip-off of 5ives. I thought it would be fun though to start making brief collections of verses on various topics (ones I like to talk about). This might be a weekly thing, or maybe not. Let me know what you think

Luke 12:15 — “Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’ ”
Mark 12:43-44 — “Calling his …

A while back I entered into a great discussion on the topic of war and pacifism. It sort of fizzled out, but the dialog is still there to continue. I think Brain has since left the readership of this blog, but maybe a comment or two will stir him back. Below is a quote from the blog post I wrote, but please stop by the old one to read the further discussion on the topic of Do Not Resist…
38″You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth …