ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 22, 2026 Prayer for the Week: Dear Spirit and Source of Inspiration, we give thanks for your boundless generosity made visible in Jesus—whether it was making time for the most vulnerable while his disciples were telling them to be quiet, or whether it was making time for a meal with one that everyone seemed to despise. His compassion was unceasing; his kindness did not seem
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 21, 2026 G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was an outspoken Christian apologist, though often bringing some humor to his writing. One of his great lines, at least from my perspective, is: The chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things. I don’t know about you, but I have had to unlearn a lot of things in
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 20, 2026 “Jesus! Jesus! I have a question for you. Do you accept those Samaritans? Don’t misunderstand me. I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.” I’m not sure if such a conversation actually took place during Jesus’s time, but it certainly seems as if people like to make those distinctions and draw very specific, yet somewhat arbitrary, lines. Some of you have heard
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 19, 2026 How many ministers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The answer is zero. Why? Because a minister first spends time praying about the unlit bulb, and then eventually forms a committee to study the need for a bulb replacement. By the third meeting of the committee, they disband because of an argument over the paint color in the bathroom. And to
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 18, 2026 I know that I am not the person who is always on top of the current culture or new thing happening in the world. Music, artists, and the new hip way of saying something are rarely on my radar. And of course, my kid reminds me often that if I use the word ‘hip,’ I am not hip. With that said, I came
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 17, 2026 Do you have certain shoes or other clothing you put on when going outside to work? I’ve got my mowing and gardening shoes (old running shoes), plus there are only a couple of pairs of shorts that I don’t mind ruining. I make the choice based on the specific work I will be doing. In Ephesians 2:10, we read, “For we are what
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 16, 2026 So in Sunday’s sermon, I talked about Anselm and his substitutionary atonement theory, which technically was incorrect. Anselm’s theory is probably better described as satisfaction atonement theory. As a side note, I might have mixed some of that up in graduate school, and thus the reason for my B in the class on Christian History During the Middle Ages. In both theories, the
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 15, 2026 Prayer for the Week: Do we pray because we must? Do we pray seeking answers? Do we pray longing for connection? Do we pray to have a conversation? Listening and Ever-present God, we may not always know why we pray, but there is something that draws us back to this sacred habit. There are moments when what we are doing might not fall
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 14, 2026 Yesterday, I joined other church leaders from NW Harris County and Montgomery County to talk about love, acceptance, affirmation, and safety for our LGBTQ+ neighbors. This was actually the third meeting of church leaders I attended in this past ten days, though the other two were not on that specific topic. But because we are in Pride Month, the topic came up in
ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS June 13, 2026 In one translation of Colossians 1:13, it says: “God rescued us from the dark power of Satan and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son…” First, the preposition is not clear, but to clarify, it is speaking of God’s son, not Satan’s son… just to clarify. The language of “dark power of Satan” is quite ominous and unsettling. It depicts an