Lingering at the cross

Before United Methodist pastors get fully ordained, they have to write a pretty long paper touching many points of theology, church life, the ministry, the sacraments, etc. Then they go in front of a small group of other pastors (and a layperson or two) and...

I firmly believe that when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal. Of course, the earliest exponent of that meal (Paul, in 1 Corinthians) insists that it matters quite a lot that you understand what you are about as you come to share in it; but still it is the meal, not the understanding, that is the primary vehicle of meaning.

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The grace of a Bob Ross t-shirt

My friend David posted this as a Facebook status update last week:  "I think the Bob Ross ‘painter of happy little clouds and trees’ t-shirt I am wearing should be quite intimidating to the other team when playing volleyball later today.“ I...

“One is enough”

We had a day-long retreat yesterday exploring ways to read the Bible and at the end of the day, we had a lot of sandwiches and cans of pop left over. We kept encouraging people to take a lot home and many people took us up on that offer so that there were folks...