God with both camps

Before the boys were born, someone gave us a 4” thick, 573 page guide to our baby’s first year. These days, I imagine  someone has invented a parenting app, with location services that can gently chirp suggestions to help you coax a frightened toddler from the top of a McDonald’s playland, as you nurse a […]

Accepting Love’s Call to Resist

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you?  Will you use your freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression?   Accepting and resisting are seeming opposites, but they can flow […]

My Dear Centrists Friends

For 47 years, we Methodists have “held the line”: marching in place, as God’s world spins away from us.  We linger again- in a critical moment. Will the Methodist church stand in place, trudge backwards, or risk progress?   The Cross came as an outside the box move. The Incarnation, Golden Rule, Reformation, Methodist Class […]

Two things at once: UMC-Next

Remembering the Jerusalem council, 45 C.E., the Apostle Paul shared, “We didn’t give in… for a single moment, so that the truth of the gospel would continue to be with you (the uncircumcised).” (Galatians 1-2) The Acts of the Apostles, along with Paul’s letters, tells how the church set aside its received traditions to embrace […]

In Response to the Judical Council Ruling

“By the rivers of Babylon —  there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.  On the willows there we hung up our harps…. How could we sing the Lord’s song as slaves in foreign land?” Psalm 137   Today, I sat on my porch nearly in tears as I read the […]

Dear Paul- Jay Archer responds to my “Bible and Homosexuality” blog

Jay Archer is  a thoughtful and Christ-like leader inside the Tennessee Conference.  Jay’s response to my “The Bible and Homosexuality” blog asks some good questions about the future of our United Methodist connection.  Jay wonders what will center the church  and where is the United Methodist church heading. I post this email from Jay with his permission. May we listen […]