Category Archives: Faith

The City Full of Songs

This is the song that always comes to mind when I think of Nashville and the many cities and towns around it.  They’ve been on my mind all day.

Posted in Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment

Reading Mark throughout Lent

This year Mark provides the Gospel through-line for the season of Lent.  When I realized this, my mind went straight to something written by Eugene Peterson many years ago (and anthologized in his collection Subversive Spirituality).  I thought it might … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith, Scripture | Tagged | Leave a comment

On the Week’s End

It’s been a week.  And now that it’s coming to an end, it’s nice that we’ve got a cool night with a good breeze here in Honolulu.  And more than that, I just found this video from 1994 of Rich … Continue reading

Posted in Faith, Music | Tagged | Leave a comment

Lent Alone

Today is Ash Wednesday for many Christians around the world.  It is a time to remember our mortality and to repent of sin.  It begins the season of Lent, which is a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter.  … Continue reading

Posted in Faith, Movies, Scripture, Teaching | Leave a comment

“The Soil for Unexpected Good”

About fifty letters into The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter we get a series of letters to Tolkien’s third son, Christopher.  The letters move back and forth wonderfully and soberingly between the events of World … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith, The Long Story | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pastors and Lonely People

It is interesting to me that Andrew Root gives his better definition of the office of pastor in a chapter titled “All the Lonely People.”  Search the terms pastor and lonely online and you’ll find at least one article a … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment

Missing the Mechanism for Persons?

As he does in some other books, Andrew Root attempts to give some historical context to what being a pastor has looked like throughout history.  This is also true for The Relational Pastor.  Early in the book, Root traces the … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Personal and the Individual

Last week I started looking at some of the concepts articulated by professor Andrew Root in The Relational Pastor.  I’d like to continue to unpack some of his thinking this week, particularly as it relates to the shared life of … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tolkien on Sermons

From the late-April 1994 from JRR Tolkien to his son Christopher concerning sermons: But as for sermons!  They are bad, aren’t they!  Most of them from any point of view.  The answer to the mystery is prob. not simple; but … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment

Losing by Winning

While I don’t leap or land in all the same places with Andrew Root, there are a number of things he writes about in The Relational Pastor that confirms some of my own experience and emboldens me with some hope … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Faith | Tagged | Leave a comment