The pathways are an invention of Evergreen church and are only a model of how we can interact with God. The statistician George P. Box said, “All models are wrong; some are useful”. I think that the pathways is a useful model, but it certainly does not express all the ways we can experience God [...]
The other day a friend emailed me this quotation on despotism by Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville:
” …each man is haunted by a fear of sinking to a lower social level and by a restless urge to better his condition. And since money has not only become to sole criterion of man’s social status…everybody is intent [...]
We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgment as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means. Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam
Matt Brown and [...]
I just had lunch with a friend of mine where we talked about the new story of Christianity. It was odd because both of us grew up with the slogan that the message of the Bible can never change but the modes of telling it can and should change to fit each culture. This sounded [...]
The ultimate hypocrisy that I see in the church today is the rejection of grace. Not in extending grace to others, but in extending grace to ourselves. We often stand in the way of our own realization of redemption because we cannot forgive ourselves.
The reason it is easier to forgive someone else and not yourself [...]
Our church is so weird. If you don’t attend Evergreen, you should know that. If you do, well, you do.
We just moved in to a new building and had our grand opening this Sunday, Mother’s Day. It was fantastic. There were the regulars we see each week, visitors, new friends and old friends we hadn’t [...]
”Let’s do prayer requests before we go home.”
“Would you pray for me? I’m having surgery tomorrow.”
“Lord, please, don’t let my daddy die.”
“God, please bring my friend the money he needs to save his house.”
One of the mnemonic devices we teach to remind people how to pray is ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. The first 3 [...]
I am like many of you. I often wake up in the morning with a list of to-dos. Very often my list might contain things that I hate to do or that I am dreading. Some mornings I don’t even really want to get out of bed.
In the face of these feelings, I have been [...]
I have a couple of close friends with whom I talk almost daily. Most operate on the pattern; if I don’t call her, she calls me. We see each other at least once a week. We know each others’ voices. To quote Seinfeld, we’ve reached, “Hi, it’s me!” status. I know when I hear any [...]
Every child misbehaves…every one. In fact, though every parent will admit their child misbehaves, I am really getting tired of the epidemic of child worshipers who at least act as if their child is perfect (at the expense of all others). When a child is wrong, they need to understand this and be lovingly helped [...]
