Blog Archive
for August, 2008
Jesus Likes Dogs in the House: How to Find Your Place in the Kingdom of God (Especially If You Don’t Think You Have One) (Matt 15:1-29)
— Sunday, August 31st, 2008 —
Keep Reading...Predestined to What? Why the Doctrine of Election Is So Hard to Believe
— Thursday, August 28th, 2008 —
Keep Reading...Guns and Butter in the Kingdom of God: Why Our Anxiety and Arrogance Don’t Make Sense to Jesus (Matt 14:13-33)
— Sunday, August 24th, 2008 —
Keep Reading...Snuggling a Mannequin: The Cosmic Lostness of a Fatherless Life
— Sunday, August 17th, 2008 —
Recently I came across one of the saddest passages I’ve ever read. Writer Augusten Burroughs writes in his new book, The Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father, about growing up with his distant, neglectful father. One part, in particular, was so raw as to make me almost cringe as I read it.
Burroughs writes about how, as a seven year-old child, he realized that whenever he’d try to crawl in his father’s lap, his dad would push him away. He writes that his father wouldn’t even look at the boy as he stared straight ahead at the television screen. The little boy kept a scorecard on a clipboard of how many times his father refused to cuddle with him, and it was close to 100 percent of the times attempted.
Hungering for his father’s presence, the boy took one of his father’s shirts and a pair of pants from his parents’ closet, stuffed the clothes with towels and pillows, and lathered it with his father’s cologne.
At night, he would snuggle up against this father mannequin, pretending to be held and loved. He writes that one day his mother found the dummy, and simply returned the clothes to the closet, the pillows to the bed.
Burroughs concludes: “Over time, my father’s scents faded from the pillows until there was nothing left of him at all.”
Keep Reading...Revival Has Dirt under His Fingernails
— Monday, August 11th, 2008 —
Guest Commentary by Robert E. Sagers
I did not grow up attending church revivals. The culture of the Pacific Northwest didn’t have the spring and fall meetings in many churches, at least that I knew of. In fact, the first revival I ever attended, I preached.
Even having so little experience with revivals, however, it is safe to say that I never expected to see anything like “The Church Basement Road Show,” a “Rollin’ Gospel Revival” put on by emergent church leaders Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Mark Scandrette.
These three men–writers, each of them–recently collaborated on a 30-city, nationwide book tour. Of course, book tours taken by emergent church writers are nothing new–in years past Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and Shane Claiborne have all taken to the road in this way–but it may be safe to say that none of them donned apparel of revival preachers from a century ago in order to market their trade.
Keep Reading...
