It’s the most neglected of parables—perhaps because we Adventists don’t like the questions it raises. I’m referring to Jesus’ saying, “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins” (Mark […]
Adventism has a PR problem, it seems to me. We tend to be insular, sticking to our own kind. Many of us enjoy living in one of the Adventist bubbles—be it Berrien Springs, Silver Spring, Loma Linda, or in my case, Binfield, England, the home of Newbold College. While we like to think of ourselves […]
American Thanksgiving is a confusing holiday for me. The older I get, the more I learn about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and the real story about what happened between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. I learned that the Thanksgiving holiday the United States celebrates today was created during the American Civil War to help foster […]
“Why,” asked a friend this week, “are so few Adventist churches really happy, rewarding places to be?” Human beings are always going to have conflicts, I told him, and there is no organization that is entirely free of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s an office, a club, a school, a family, or a church. […]
It’s a familiar trope in action television and movie scripts. A group of intrepid survivors slogs through dark and threatening dangers. Suddenly one of them experiences a melt-down: “It’s no use,” they whine. “We’ll never survive!” Then someone in the group yells, “Get a grip!” and slaps the cowardly team member. “We’re going to make it,” […]
Last Sunday morning when my phone reminded me it was October 22, I felt moved to say something about it. The result, completed late afternoon of the same day, was this widely shared essay. I was astonished at how many of you resonated with my feeling that the church we grew up in used fear and […]
I spent a significant portion of my childhood and teens intensely jealous of the spiritually certain. Those who spoke of ‘blessed assurance’; who claimed, ‘I haven’t a doubt in my mind that….’; or believed that ‘God has made it unmistakably clear that….’ How could they be so unwavering in their faith, I wondered? What did […]
When I was an undergraduate, I didn’t understand how much representation mattered. I’d heard people argue about it, but I thought the discussion was superfluous. I heard it discussed in church, but assumed it was just bickering. Sure, it would be nice if there were more women in positions of influence, but that shouldn’t affect […]
Some years ago I was the pastor of a venerable congregation in Ohio with a name you would recognize, mostly because of the vegetarian meat analogs that were manufactured there. The congregation had outgrown their old church, and we were building a new one. As we were planning the new church, I remember asking one […]
Some time ago, Adventist Today was forwarded a video clip from an independent ministry that made what immediately seemed to us some rather preposterous assertions. I needn’t tell you who it came from or what the claims were; if you’ve not seen the one we saw, you’ve seen many very much like it. Without even looking […]
