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In Praise of Uselessness
I’ve created a new space on this site that was really what this page was originally about: a place to write anything. I’m calling it the “wanderlog.” This ultimately is a category to protect me from me, to give me permission to write anything without purpose, without apology. Of course, I very much hope that it’s not useless, but I’m giving myself permission to be useless. And really, that’s an important value to protect. Usefulness is good, but the world pushes you to make it ultimate. I may have shared this before (maybe I should give myself permission to be repetitive, too!) but I really connected with something I heard…
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Something True, Revisited
I have two blogs and rarely contribute to either one. Why is that? It’s because I’m a writer. That’s what I do when I have time to myself. It’s what I do because I have no other choice. It’s how I see myself and how I want to be seen. Of course, I want to be seen as more than that. I don’t want to be mistaken for some caricature. So I have a YouTube space so I can share educational videos, and I have a SoundCloud account so I can share music and sermons, and I have an Instagram account so I can share pictures. I enjoy these things.…
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ETS ’21 Annual Meeting Review
Greetings! I am thrilled to be taking part in one of the few traditions I have on this site: my review of the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. What follows is not exactly hard-hitting journalism so much as reflections in gratitude on what I learned, largely for the sake of those who couldn’t be there. This year’s meeting was in Ft. Worth, Texas, and I couldn’t resist the chance to drive down and explore my old hometown of DFW. This made for a long solo drive, but I enjoyed decent weather and beautiful fall colors the whole way down. (As for the way back, well…what a difference a…
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5 Ways to Improve Your Christian Podcast
I love listening to podcasts. In fact, I’ve listened to them since the mid-2000s, when they were still in their infancy. Normally I stick to my favorites, but every now and then I give a new one a try. And occasionally I find podcasts that are incredibly promising in their title and lackluster in their content and execution. As tempting as it sometimes is to vent my frustrations online, I’m working to push past this and reframe it as an opportunity to create something helpful. So I would like to turn a recent example of a podcast gone bad into an opportunity to build up and encourage. Here are five…
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Respectability
Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Matthew 8:18-20 (ESV) For most of church history, it was easy to draw connections between Scripture and the best learning of the day. But as the scientific revolution picked up steam, it began to generate more and more conflicts with traditional Christian teaching about the world and the way that…