Shaking The Dust From My Sandals

If any household or town refuses to welcome you or listen to your message, shake its dust from your feet as you leave. – Matt 10:14 Jesus gave this instruction to his disciples as he sent them out, two by two, to heal the sick, raise the dead, and proclaim the Good News that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.  At first glance, this seems to be a rather odd instruction.  Even in its historical and...

The Price Jesus Paid And The Value Of A Person

As mentioned in a previous post, I had the pleasure of hearing Shane Claiborne speak at Tempe First United Methodist Church on Saturday night.  He was funny, irreverent, emotional, philosophical, and, most of all, thought-provoking.  Prior to his speaking, a musician named Matt Beem played and spoke to the crowd.  One of the things he said really struck me and has been rumbling around in my head since...

Youth Ministry For The Millennial Generation

It’s a gorgeous Saturday morning here in Arizona.  I’m up, the house is quiet, the organic fair-trade Peruvian coffee from Sprout’s Market is brewed, all is seemingly well.  That is, until I sit down at my laptop and fire up the old Tweetdeck. One of the first tweets I read this morning is from Rick Warren‘s Toolbox (rwtoolbox) and it says this: Shorter attention spans means higher...

Abandonment

If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it. – Luke 17:33 Jesus often talks about how, in order to inherit the kingdom, we need to abandon our worldly ambitions.  The passage from Luke, quoted above, is just one example of this. From the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus calls his followers to abandonment as a requirement of following him.  For...

Theological Illiteracy In The US On The Rise

Via Yahoo News: A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths. Respondents to the survey were asked 32 questions with a range of difficulty, including whether they could...