Several years ago I visited a church on Pentecost Sunday. At the time, I didn’t even know Pentecost was something celebrated, nor did I realize this church, being an unaffiliated church, would put so much focus on it. Pentecost is typically celebrated on a Sunday 7 weeks after Easter, and in 2012 it will be…
All posts in theology
What Evangelicals Can Learn From the Eastern Orthodox
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time at an Eastern Orthodox church (Saint Nicklaus Church, yes the guy known as Santa Clause) in SW Portland with my World Religions class. Having grown up within the evangelical church I had not spent much time with other Christians outside of that circle,…
Mayor Bloomberg, 9/11, and The Fear of Losing Christian America
I wanted to posted about this last week but I didn’t want to bring more attention to something that was only taking away from where the focus should have been on the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, 2001. A few weeks ago the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, announced that no clergy would…
Making God In Your Own Image
Several weeks ago I was in a conversation that I found to be increasingly frustrating. The conversation was with someone I am very close to, but we do have our disagreements in politics and theology. My friend was objectifying groups of people to be this or that without having any experience with any specific people…
The Search For Significance
I’m sure many of you have seen this Levi’s commercial that was recently released. If you watch Hulu a lot, I know they’ve been featuring it on there for the past week. The commercial is a part of the “Go Forth” series of commercials they’ve been releasing for the past few years. I think this…
Has Art Changed Your Life?
Last week I took a course on preaching narrative literature. One of the big areas we focused on was the power of story. The Bible has one overarching story with many great stories within it. It is a beautiful piece and it is a work of art by God that has changed the world. To…