Category: A Transformed Faith

To help you heal, discover, deepen, share–through Christian tradition and innovation.

Belonging Before Believing

I’m all set up to teach an intensive 3 week class at McCormick Theological Seminary this May with my colleague Pastor Alise Barrymore from The Emmaus Community in Chicago Heights. It’s called Belonging Before Believing: New Communities and Emerging Forms of Church. The class will run from May 13-June 3 if we get at least …

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Church for the 21st Century

I just returned from a 3-day leadership consultation with the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA). My good friend and colleague, Rev. Shawna Bowman was there too. She wrote/drew the amazing notes above, while we were talking about new things that are happening or that we wish were happening in the churches. The gathering …

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Be Amazing

For the last two weeks I’ve been preaching on 1 Corinthians 12, the verses where it talks about us having a variety of gifts empowered by the same spirit. It’s a message that Paul was giving to the church at Corinth, so that all people in the community would be honored and so that people …

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Unambiguous Appearance of God

Today is Epiphany, a day on which we celebrate the appearance of God in human form–the incarnation. Although we celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th, today we celebrate the first “appearance” of Jesus to the Gentiles. This marks his being seen by the Magi, the “three kings.” They symbolize the first non-Jews who …

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What I Want to Say

There’s a saying that pastors have about five sermons that they preach again and again throughout their careers. It’s the core message that you want to get across to the world. As I’ve been preaching weekly sermons for two months now, and weekly teachings and reflections for 10 years, I took a moment to list …

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