Questioning the System While Being Part Of It
Doubt is kind of a terrifying thing, or at least I was told it should be. When you start to doubt things you start to relinquish control over whatever you are doubting. If you give…
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Money and Why God Doesn’t Care
I’ve been finding myself getting more and more frustrated lately with how people spend their money. When I hear stories of 2 million dollar church building projects, 50 thousand dollar pothole fundraising campaigns, the 40…
Standing Up For What you Believe When You Are Part of the Problem
Geez Magazine this month was brilliant. It has hit me where I feel stuck in my faith as of late. I feel stuck because “standing up for what you believe in is awkward, especially when…
Jim Stokley, A Response to a Skeptic
Update: I really do not want this post to become a central topic surrounding the death of Jim Stokley. Jim was an important part of this city, and I hope that we can see him…
The Parable About the Building (An Original Parable)
Darryl’s been doing some writing lately. He’s written a few parables and one we thought was a perfect fit to end our 8 months series on the parables at theStory. So Joe and I took…
Photoshoot At Holmes Foundry
I went out with Troy Shantz (who is my newest friend here renting space from theStory) and Nikki Gould on a trash the dress shoot. We ended up at the old Holmes Foundry and exploring….
Invite-Only Conferences, Big Churches, Small Pay Checks and Old Cranky Men
I’m tired of big monster churches, leaders and organizations not caring about the small and insignificant. It’s everywhere. This conference has been going on in the States for the last few years. It’s called Q….
Either Go Big and Have a Few Meaningful Connections or Stay Small and Have a Few Meaningful Connections
The title says it all really. I’ve been wrestling with this, publicly even, for a while now. I’m just realizing that no matter how hard I try to create a name for myself, my friendships…
The One About the Two Debtors (A Sermon on Luke 7:36-50)
This is one of my favourite parables. I’ve brought it up over and over again here on Sunday mornings and because I think in it lies truths that we all need to hear over and…
A Few Videos
I’ve stopped doing links on my site and moved over to Google Reader, Delicious and Twitter as a better way to share things I’m doing, reading and watching online. It’s much less time-consuming and less…
The Good News Series
Update: Here is my post on the Good News as part of the series I describe blow. I went to Los Angeles in October last year and I asked David Fitch if while I was…
The One About the Rich Fool (A Sermon on Luke 12:13-21)
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? A rabbi in this time…
Driving on City Sidewalks on Relevant
Driving on City Sidewalks. My favourite band. Two of my best friends. The brilliant musicians behind the soundtrack of One Size Fits All? and their EP Where Angels Crowd to Listen got on the frontpage…
Tabled on Easter Friday
Each Easter Friday, Joe goes all out putting a service together than usually incorporates heavy imagery, liturgy and creative response. Today was no different. Today we followed a liturgy built by him, sang a few…
Shooting Guns in the foothills of the Black Mountains, Arizona
So here is a completely random experience that Ron and I had in Las Vegas. Ron saw an advertisement to shoot a gun at a range on some brochure. So like Ron does, he was…
Skeptic Shares his Thoughts on theStory
I wrote this post putting my letter to the editor in the Sarnia paper about churches in Sarnia needing to step up and actually fulfill our mission to do what Jesus has called us to…
Consumerism: Deals, Coupons and Saving Money
A while back I started doing a little bit of writing on my struggles with the consumeristic tendencies that I see in our society, myself and the church. I’ve got a few more posts to…
Letter to the Editor About Churches Banding Together
Update: My letter was printed in the Sarnia Observer on Wednesday April 1, 2009. Dan McCaffery of The Observer in Sarnia wrote a short little piece in the Observer yesterday. Unfortunately, I think all of…
Uncommon Cents
This month we are tackling some parables that have to do with money and possessions. We took this photo ourselves, it’s actually Joe’s hand, so it’s up for grabs to use under the creative commons…
Owning Vs. Possessing (You Can’t Have Both)
Tonight I went with some friends from theStory to watch Rob Bell’s latest talk tour series thing called Drops like Stars in Royal Oak, Michigan. It was a well done talk on the relationship between…