Action Precedes Belief Only Once You’ve Been Enlightened
We start life where the way we live informs the way we think. We are raised as children and then eventually grow into adults and we only know life how we experience it. The majority…
Thinking Further And Acting Better Than Bill Maher On Muslims, Terrorism and The Charlie Hebdo attacks
Bill Maher has been growing in popularity as of late. People are really jumping on his no-shit direct opposition to religion. In particular, he was recently on the Jimmy Kimmel show where he stated that…
The Goodness and Badness of Guilt and Grace
This morning we chatted a bit about guilt, shame, repentance, confession and this quote: The one way of not doing anything about a situation is feeling guilty about it, because when people feel guilty about…
New Years Sermon: On Meaninglessness and Setting Goals
Let me start with a story. This is taken from Caesura Letters. Philosophies for Sale is a clever dialogue written by Lucian of Samosata, a second century satirist. It is a story about an auction…
If White People Are Upset About A Barrier, Imagine What Aboriginals Must Feel Like Over Their Land
In most conflicts between white folk and aboriginal folk we are usually presented with quite the bit of rhetoric that someone isn’t following the rules. In the recent situation at Ipperwash where Kettle and Stony…
Trends in Conversations around the Protests
In trying to follow the unfolding of the Michael Brown shooting and protests and the Burnaby mountain protests I am noticing several different trends in the conversation. 1. Individual Justice vs Corporate Justice – Many…
A Sermon on Thankfulness
This week has been an interesting and eventful week for me. The story about our ducks being taken is going into the newspaper. I wrote few blog posts that got some attention and conversation going….
Tim Gibb and Bethel’s Fight Against The “Homosexual Agenda”
I spent an hour of my evening tonight listening to Pastor Tim Gibb (the senior pastor of a decade or so at the Sarnia Pentecostal Church that I grew up up) ripping into the “gay…
Parables of Judgment – It’s Really Not Looking Good For Us
The last three weeks of the church calendar have been awfully depressing. Especially if we read them right. Parable of the Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) Must read David Henson’s take | My sermon here Parable of…
Why We Shouldn’t Stand For Our National Anthem
I don’t think I really thought about this until the last few years. But lately, I just haven’t been able to stand when the national anthem is on. It just feels so, I don’t know,…
The Story About Our Ducks And How Sarnia Took Them
Early in May our house decided to get some ducks. Why? Well I think everyone had their own reasons. Rachel wanted someone to cuddle with. Dallas wanted to raise his own meat. Nick wanted companionship….
Ireland in HDR
Sometimes I take the same picture 5 times all with different exposures and then throw them together. I think it looks pretty cool. Click on the image to see it bigger. It will look sweet…
Ireland Trip
2014 has been quite the year of travelling. What a beautiful world. Costa Rica, Azores and now Ireland. We found cheap tickets again. Well Rachel did. So we took a few weeks and drove around…
Pregnancy Centres, Dammit Janet and How I Ended Up In The Middle
So this is interesting. The Pregnancy Centre in Sarnia applied for a grant from Ontario Trillium Foundation to open a second centre in Petrolia (a nearby town). The pregnancy centre here is well supported by…
A Sermon on The Ten Virgins: Formation Cannot Be Shared
This was passed to me after my sermon, but I had to post it. This is a brilliant reading of this passage and I think makes sense of a lot of the struggle we were…
Networks vs Groups of Belonging
Zygmunt Bauman’s book, Does Ethics Have A Chance In An Age Of Consumers is one of those books that I don’t know if I ever will finish. I’ve been reading 3 pages a week for…
Stories Vs Relationships
We have an affinity for stories. We like to tell them because they create a summary of something that we found important in our life. The stories we tell, the way we frame them all…
Church Practices – Lectionary
Other Practices The Practice theStory uses the lectionary that is arranged in a three-year cycle so that we hear the entire biblical story “” creation and fall, the exodus, captivity and return, the promise and…
Church Practices – Infant Baptism & Dedication
Other Practices The Practice As a Free Methodist Church we interchange the words baptism and dedication. For us having parents offer their children back to God alongside of their community is an important and symbolic…
America Is A Religion Of Violence
Just watched this little exchange with Sam Harris, Ben Affleck and Bill Maher. Not sure why someone like Affleck was on the show. Not only can he not debate well, he got all too personal…