Six years ago, I served as an assistant basketball coach at a university in Texas. The first week on the job, the head coach (my boss) walked into my office with the other assistant coach and declared, “Boys, we’re going on a road trip. We need to spend some time with each other out of [...]

Eugene Peterson on scripture’s power:
“Exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says. [...]

UPDATE: Following the sermon/teaching Sunday @ Otter Creek Church on the role of mysticism and the Spirit in the life of deep spirituality . . .
I had lunch with a friend recently who told me he’d never experienced sleep paralysis prior to me talking about it. This is one of the danger about talking publicly [...]

There are two primary ways the church teaches us to engage God: time and space. We must pay attention to time for it is the most precious gift we can give to God and to others. It is a gift that far outweighs any dollar amount (despite the consumerist notion that “time is money”). Equally [...]

In an attempt to elaborate on what I wrote in the previous blog, here’s some more food for thought. I know some will get lost in the language, meaning, and logic . . . faith is not for the faint of heart. You have to work at it. I’ve always been suspicious of “the easy [...]

I use the phrases “personal piety” and “social justice” not because I personally use them often but because I hear them used often by theologians, ministers, students, and other people interested in religious/spiritual conversations.
I’ve noticed that people who are primarily passionate about personal piety (reading the bible, devotionals, keeping a journal and other daily rituals) [...]

Tonight, I begin co-teaching Luke-Acts for ministry majors at Rochester College. I usually begin the class the way I was taught by one close friend: we talk about Scripture.
I will inevitably talk about two important elements of reading and interpreting the Bible. By the way, simply reading is interpretation. First, we’ll discuss location. Physical location [...]