Anabaptist and Quaker essays, sermons, and other writings
When I was serving Olympic View Church in Seattle as their youth pastor, my area minister,1 Carol Mason, made a point of meeting with each of the pastors under her care about once a month or so. She and I would meet at Panera Bread at Northgate Mall and have […]
We all have toolboxes of one sort or another. Sometimes it’s a literal toolbox, or at least a tool drawer in the kitchen or the utility room. It’ll be filled with hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, and other things that help us accomplish a task of some kind. Maybe we have […]
Right from creation and soon after the fall of humanity, war and conflicts became part of human nature. In some parts of the world, Christians are witnessing unspeakable continuous attacks and killings perpetrated by terrorist groups in the name of religion. This ongoing violence is slowly worsening the mental health […]
This year at the first-ever online Annual Conference for the Church of the Brethren, there was understandably a good amount of discussion around the COVID-19 pandemic. There were mentions of the ways that it made it harder for us to connect, the ways it made our beloved traditions just a […]
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves. – George Eliot, Middlemarch Look up, Friends. Over your head hovers a crown of everlasting life. – But that’s right, you don’t see it, do you? We know it’s there, […]
One of the most significant themes from Hebrew scripture that many Christians overlook is that of the land–a land with which God promises to bless the people. Perhaps that aversion contains some awareness of just how problematic it has been when Christians have laid claim to some of those “land” […]
Why join one of the Historic Peace Churches? Jesus is at the center of this question. Jesus is at the center of this passage (Romans 5:1-11). Jesus at the center of our faith. Jesus is the source of our strength. Jesus is the source of our peace. Jesus is the […]
In a lot of the scholarship on homiletics – the study of preaching, its approaches and methods – Christian preachers are enjoined to have in our uppermost consciousness the imperative to preach the Good News, to ask, of each passage of scripture on which we are called to preach, what […]
Let me tell you about the Good Teacher. He indwells you. He has always indwelt you. He speaks through your conscience, warning you not to do evil. If you remember telling a lie or stealing something when you were a child, you may remember that it gave you a kind […]
9 What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, 10 as it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. 11 There is no one who understands; there is no one who […]