I led the worst small group ever. I'm saying that as an indictment of my leadership and not as a criticism of the group. But they didn't exactly do me any favors. The idea for the small group was simple: give 20 somethings a place to gather together, study scripture, worship and pray. It seems simple enough. But in reality I was totally against the idea that people in their twenties needed a unique group. Why couldn't they just do this at church like normal adults? That's when I had my first stroke of genius: make a church wide announcement that it was a group for 20 somethings, but invite anyone else who was interested to also show up. That way, I figured, the group might have a little perspective and diversity. Read More
Frogs, Puerto Rico, and Three Kings Day
When I think of Epiphany, I think of amphibians. The coquis (onomatopoetically named frogs) densely cover the Puerto Rican island, and when they leave for places like Hawaii, they often do so in packs overtaking their new digs, blasting their disyllabic cry as they did back home. That is to say they are quite loud at night and considered invasive by some. The same has often been said of the Puerto Rican people. Read More
Lonliness and Violence
We became friends in freshman honors Geometry class when Mark stood up to answer a Trigonometry bonus question that the teacher said was well beyond our ability. Mark was a strange kid: the kind of kid who wears snow boots in October; who had a mustache as a freshman; who transferred from another school and claimed that the other school was "St Mary's Over Looking the Thames." Read More
Seeking God's Peace
Jerry Seinfeld once reported that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death. Then, in his classic style, he reflected: we would rather be the guy in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. I have always related to this statement, not because I'm afraid of public speaking - I'm a sucker for the limelight - but because I would rather be dead than left alone. Read More
Church is for Children
Our mobile church has bought a building after about two decades in a high school. To consecrate the new church, we are reading through the whole Bible and broadcasting a live feed online. I have been fascinated with the live feed image of the new sanctuary. In the first moments watching the video stream, I saw one of our senior pastor’s children walk up to the font and dip in his hands. He was mesmerized by the water overflowing. I said to my wife, “Our girls are going to be playing in that water their whole lives.”
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Advent is for Seekers
The purpose of Advent is that we prepare for the coming of Jesus. As we look forward to the celebration of his birth (anachronistic as the calendar may be), we should challenge ourselves to look for him with new eyes. Advent reminds us that whether we are believers or skeptics, Jesus draws near to us this season. Read More
A Very Guilty Advent 1.1
When I was six, I feared that I might become the antichrist.
I remember it vividly: that small house on Morgan Street; that living room where my father fell asleep to Sunday afternoon baseball games; that backyard with the swing set down from which I was too afraid to climb, when finally our mailman—a tall godsend who picked me up and slowly lifted me to the ground. I remember the laundry room vividly, and the bedroom that I shared with my sister. It is still in my mind, though we moved at six. But most of all, most often at least, I remember learning about Jesus Christ from the most influential and maybe greatest preachers that I have heard: my mother.
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God in the Hurting
One of my kids, "A" has recently been having a lot of allergic reactions. Most days she is breaking out in hives on her arms, legs, and tummy. We know in general what she is allergic to: cats, dogs, pollen, dust, etc. But the allergist is still testing her to get a complete picture of what we are dealing with. The cat and dog allergies are the biggies. "A" took the news that she wouldn't be able to go to homes with cats and dogs like a champ even though it meant that she wouldn't be able to play at her best friend's house anymore.
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Friendsgiving
Recently, I went to an event called "Friendsgiving." Friendsgiving is Thanksgiving with your friends, rather than your family. Everyone brings a dish, unless your me, in which case you bring the booze. It has become an annual thing amongst my friends in the city (who are much cooler than the losers who populate this blog; though they are less male and less conservative so their hair isn't as good). Read More
Book Review: Afterlives of the Saints
A couple years ago I hosted a small group at my house with some friends. We decided to study a classic Christian text called The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks which has organized short stories and sayings from monks by topic such as Greed, Pride, Lust, etc. At the beginning of each group we'd struggle to articulate how utterly backwards we found these holy desert fathers. Their stories seem to advocate extreme, dangerous even, forms of Christian asceticism that no good pastor would recommend. So should we treat this book which is treasured by the church? Were we being exposed to how weak and pathetic our American Christianity had become? Or was there another purpose in reading these stories?
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Weeping Over Dido (Not that Dido)
As a child, I knew that I would be a pastor. It was crystal clear. I remember approaching my pastor as a nine-year-old, which was terrifying for an introverted kid, and telling him I wanted to be baptized. I believed this stuff. I wanted to show it. The Bible said to be baptized. I knew that much. It seemed like a good place for a future pastor to start. A few years later, I remember talking to my dad in sixth grade while walking into Jewel about how Christians didn’t take good enough notes on sermons. For me, sermons were serious business. Real Christians took notes. That same year I went to Wendy’s with my senior pastor. I met with him because I was called not to be a youth pastor, like my friends aspired to, but a Senior Pastor. After all, as a kid with no knowledge of elder boards or publishing companies or denominations or anything outside of my local church, I believed the senior pastor was the great guardian of the Christian faith. They were men who heard the very voice of God through following careful exegetical rules. I had to be one. Read More
Normal Christianity
Have you ever been at a church prayer meeting where a boy rushed in frantically and asked, with deadly seriousness, if there was a priest available because his mom was possessed by a demon and he really needed help? Me neither. I slept in that day. I got a call from my dad (not a priest but a pastor, which the boy decided was good enough) telling me that he and a couple elders from the church had gone to pray for a woman who displayed all the classic Exorcist symptoms of demonic possession, sans full head rotation and projectile vomiting. Read More
Boring is Good
A couple Sundays ago, while the priests prepared the sacraments, my oldest daughter leaned over to me and asked "can we go now? This is boring."
"No." I replied. "Boring is good."
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Put Down Your Swag and Follow Me
As a follower of Christ how much should I care about my image? I certainly know I shouldn’t spend too much thought or money on clothes. Christ made that pretty clear. Thrift stores help with this. I get to spend my money on important things, like student loans, while maintaining swag. In fact when a student says, “Where did you get that knit tie?” and I say, “From the thrift store,” it builds my ethos and ego. Read More
Tattoos Hurt More When You're Lonely
I met Jim at a tattoo parlor. There is a picture in your mind of who would frequent a tattoo parlor on a Thursday night. That picture is Jim. He has a bushy black beard. He's loud but not angry. He doesn't mind involving the whole group in his conversation. He'll ask a stranger in the chair next to him to agree on a point he's trying to make. He's spending another night getting his entire right arm tattooed. It's a dragon. Did you really have to ask what it was? Of course it's a dragon. Read More
King of Awana? Not While I was There.
Al Cedeno is a lot of things, obese, over-hyped, and not a friend of bald honesty, to name a few, but he is not the King of Awana. That title is all mine. Read More
Am I too Cynical for This: Evangelicalism
I knew it all. I was the king of my youth group, the king of Awana. I led worship (despite my voice). I taught Bible studies at my school. I planned on seminary. I went to a Christian college. I was cynical because I wasn’t sure that the God that was being worshipped (in between so many songs and verses about ourselves) could send the universe spinning and become man and die and be raised again. The God I kept hearing about was too weak.
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Vampirism and The Arcadian Trap
Written by Drew Curle, Esq.
I recently watched "The Lost Boys" for the first time. It was on TV, and it was very late. I did not really want to be watching this movie. And yet it pulled me in. This is because what I had assumed to be nothing but an 80's camp-fest is actually an insight into the mind of the contemporary hipster.
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Don't Hate Your Parent's Church
I got a lot of reaction on the last blog about Frustrated Christianity. Yesterday one reader emailed me to ask:
I am curious as to your background? Where you raised in a strict Christian home? Or maybe a hyper-fundamentalist background? I was, and I often wonder if that isn't why I feel what I do.
My church history goes like this. I was born in an Assembly of God church. When I was about six years old my parents found a Charismatic Lutheran church that we attended for a little while. One of the pastors decided that he wanted to plant a church in the Vineyard movement.
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Frustrated Christianity
There are a lot of frustrated young Christians in America today. I’m one of them. I know more of them. If I try to boil the frustration down it points to a discontentment with how little our experience of Christianity resembles something in which God would need to be involved.