Dear ______: Thanks for your note. You are definitely right: seeking a mountaintop experience is by no means the only off-target assumption people bring to seminary. And the assumptions that you bring make a big difference on the experience you have. Anyway, the conversations you mention point to another assumption that can keep people from […]
Letters to a Young Pastor: What to Do at a Fork in the Road
Dear ______: Yes, I suppose it is hard to just set aside your feeling that hearing God’s call is kind of scary. You’ve come to a fork in the road. You must choose. You might get it wrong. What is the worst thing that could happen? Yes, sometimes there are serious consequences. In my first computer programming class […]
Lent 3: Food as Food
Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399), the great Desert Father with whom I’m spending this Lent has a has a way of pointing out obvious things that I’ve spent a very long time not noticing: biblically speaking, food has a long history of getting us into problems. Desire for food gave birth to disobedience and a sweet taste […]
Lent: Taking Stock with Evagrius Ponticus
Lent is a season for self-examination. It is not mainly about feeling guilty. It is more like a chance to check the GPS (that might be “God Positioning System” if you like acronyms) and figure out exactly where you have come and where you still have to go. We often describe this life as a spiritual journey, […]
How to Organize Your Faith (Heidelberg Catechism Q24)
Shhh! A whole lot of Christians are quietly afraid that someday, someone will ask them about their faith. We need some outline points, like the pegs on a coat rack. No hooks and you just have a pile of stuff on the floor. Add a row of pegs and you can hang up a whole lot of stuff […]