On Being Offended By Labels
Story One. Gerry D came to Sarnia and did a comedy show last summer. A bunch of us went to see it, a number of us teachers who connected with him on a different level. He…
Author: Nathan Colquhoun
…And We Will Become A Happy Ending
See More Art Installations… A book has been written. For the last six years I’ve spent most of my time with theStory. theStory is a 6 year old church plant in Sarnia, Ontario. Myself along…
Expecting Gratitude Makes Gifts Lose Their Giftness
Here is a problem I have run into. A scenario happens where someone is given something. Maybe it’s a gift, or your time, money, a job. It doesn’t really matter. A gift is and can…
Knowing your Past and Hoping for the Future, Creates the Present – A Sermon on Ephesians 1:11-23
As we start into Ephesians it’s going to be important to try and keep the things we talk about week to week at the back of our heads. We do not want to risk treating…
Book Review – True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism
Recently a good friend of mine, Troy, has decided to go in the way of the Atheist worldview. Troy has a similar history to me growing up in the Pentecostal church and as of recently…
The Church is Representative of the Non-Violent and yet Powerful Rule of Christ
We are starting a series in Ephesians which is always fun as I get to work my way through the commentaries of brilliant folks. I’m excited to get back into some Witherington, Fowl and Wright…
My Favourite Reads of 2012
I don’t read nearly as much as I should. But in no specific order. Debt by David Graeber – This book blew my mind. It is a history about money and economics and how it…
Sermon: Christmas As An Inside Joke
Being the season of Advent, a season of purposeful waiting, it tends to get a bit serious. Everything is more solemn right now, the songs we sing with Dan leading are more depressing about longing…
The Great Divide Between Atheists and Theists
I haven’t run into too many atheists that think or admit that there are smart theists in the world. I haven’t run into too many theists that would call an atheist intelligent or thoughtful. What…
I’m Losing Interest In Preaching But I Feel Like I Shouldn’t
Preaching is slowly becoming this dreary thing that I can’t help but thinking of it as an empty routine. I enjoy formulating arguments, doing research and thinking about theology a lot. I enjoy reading and…
Google Apps Is No Longer Free 2012
For almost all of my clients, and my own personal domain, I setup Google to manage all my e-mail. For the last number of years they have offered up to ten free accounts for Google…
The Difference Between Owing Someone A Favor And Owing Someone A Debt
By far the book of 2012 for me (it possibly has taken me 8 months to read it, I’m not great with history). Nevertheless, this book was phenominal and eye-opening. Debt: The First 5,000 Years…
Export Notes and Highlights from PDF on Your Kindle
Every once in a while I run into a snag with using cloud based technology or web based apps. Namely, the company that runs the software can make changes whenever they want and then you…
Is Church Planting Just A Phase?
theStory is about 6 years old. It functions decently and is slowly being taken over by the community that it consists of. We no longer have a ‘senior pastor’ and the leadership team is taking…
Rowan Williams on Contemplation, Evangelization and Self Congratulation
I found this from something Mirosalv Volf shared tonight and thought it was jam packed with brilliance. It is the text of Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England and the Anglican Communion,…
God’s Future Has Burst into the Present – A Sermon on Resurrection and Hope
We have been in a series right now entitled Results May Vary. The idea being that even as we move along in our lives and understand what our role is that the results will always…
A Sermon On Stewardship And Not About How You Spend Your Money
We finally got our write-up for our series finished and we left it up there when you were walking in just so you could get a grasp on what we are trying to do with…
Preaching As The Grand Reminder
I’ve now got a solid six years or so under my belt of preaching sermons to a pretty broad group of Christians at my home church in Sarnia. You can read all my sermons, as…
Change or Community
Sometimes I feel like there a choice to make between change and community. I don’t mean change ambiguously. I mean changing from good to bad, wrong to right, oppressing to liberating, lazy to productive, hateful…
A Sermon on Our Gatherings and What They Mean
One of the the things I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about and reading about lately is our worship service. I tend to do this and then start reading a lot of books,…