Building Vs Growing A Church
Why do pastors so often treat congregations with the impatience and violence of developers building a shopping mall instead of the patient devotion of a farmer cultivating a field? The shopping mall will be abandoned in…
My Faith As My Art
I am not much of an artist in the traditional sense. I can’t draw, paint, sing, play or perform. I lean to the analytical side of the spectrum and spend a good amount of time…
Corrie Colquhoun: A Eulogy
A poem I wrote the night before she died. Below is a prayer and eulogy I wrote for the funeral today. Here is the MP3 file for the entire funeral. Sadness strikes the heart of…
The Night She Said Goodbye
Naivety allows one to face into fate Each day comes and goes Why accept what you know to be true? Might as well believe in something else Peace comes through ignorance Each day comes and…
Vulnerability: Equal Parts Giving and Receiving
Dave, a friend of mine, responded to me about my post on Men’s Vulnerability Group and I thought it was worth re-posting some of it. I have begun to realize and set aside all forms…
Men’s Vulnerability Group And How I’m Learning About Vulnerability
Based on a few conversations with some great counselor friends, we at theStory have started a group which we call Men’s Vulnerability Group. The idea for the group started because of the realization that community…
Rejection Is An Assault On Our Humanity
Why do we hate to be rejected? Why does it hurt? Rejection is nothing more than a cognitive disposition towards someone. It’s just how someone thinks about you. In order for rejection to be effective,…
Being Friend’s With External Processors
I am an external processor. This means that I think out loud. This blog is a great example of how my personality works. When I have an idea, the very act of writing it down…
Anger Means So Much More Than Angry
When someone gets angry we should never take it at face value. I’ve learned this a number of ways. I learned it first in experiencing people’s anger with my blog posts. I’ll say something like…
In Support of Non-Violence that Looks Like Violence
A little while ago I was asking if maybe violence was necessary sometimes. For myself, I still take a perspective of non-violence is a discipline and direction that I want to live my life, but…
A Sermon on Potlucks And Sharing Meals
Potlucks is the oldest and most consistent tradition that we have at theStory. From our very first meeting as a community, we met in each other’s homes and ate together. The importance of such a…
The Universe Is Made Up Of Stories
This excerpt is from Sapiens: Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in peoples…
Guilt and Empathy Are Both Attempts For Connection
Guilt and empathy are not two things that you would normally think would go together. But I’ve been thinking lately of their connection on two different levels. The first is that empathetic people generally are…
The Stories We Tell Ourselves And What Drives Us To Action
One of the aims of November was to ask ourselves the question of “now what” in regards to some of the current issues around us. The one’s I suggested to the lead team were the…
Simple Belief Systems Should Be Affirmed
Humans have this need to summarize and simplify our belief system. When you ask people what they believe in, at the core of their being, you get very concise answers. You hear things like God,…
Is True Consciousness Possible When You Hold Onto Faith?
Faith by it’s very nature is a choice to hold to something that cannot be proven. It is a choice of hope despite the lack of evidence that any exists or does not exist. Those…
Does Church Shape Us, Or Do we Shape The Church?
One of the things I’ve grown passionate about with our church is to really spell out and communicate our church practices. As it is these types of practices form us into certain kinds of people….
Nihilism vs Faith
When you allow yourself to explore all philosophical and religious angles, you will come face to face with the world of nihilism. And after exploring all the different options, nihilism becomes quite attractive because it…
Sheltered Workshops Fulfills a Need
I wrote this because organizations like Wawanosh Enterprises should be defended on issues like this. Turning a service like this into a political and economic issue hurts everyone involved. It ends up becoming about making…
Dallas and Celeste
A few years back, this guy with big, dark rimmed glasses sat in our church with his friends. One year later, he sat quietly in a living room in Saskatoon across from me. At some…