Are you a pastor or church leader stuck, out of ideas, or struggling with what to do next?
Join Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines of University Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)/United Church of Christ, San Diego as he sits down with an indigenous leader to talk about sacred dance in indigenous traditions.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.’s history in the United Church of Christ and the Civil Rights Movement go back years and reflect a legacy of justice orientation and activism.
This isn’t an easy story — it is especially hard to avoid the pitfalls of any Christian preaching about the destruction of the Temple (I pray I didn’t contribute to those anti-Semitic interpretations!). But I think it is one of the most important stories in Mark, a short section of verses that help make sense of the entire gospel.
Worship Nov. 7, 2021
Sermon with Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines
This morning, I preached at Platte Woods United Methodist Church in Kansas City. They’ve been doing a sermon and education series on Freeing Jesus - and they asked me to come and finish up their study of the book.
This is a tribute to all healthcare workers battling the Covid-19 pandemic, sung by members from Canterbury & Coventry Choirs.
The Certificate in Community Chaplaincy Program is designed for any individual who desires to be an agent of healing in their local community.
Scripture: Genesis 22: 1-14
Perhaps the story isn’t so much about God but about us. But if you accept that the Bible is the work of many authors, the story tells you nothing about God. Instead, it tells you what the various authors’ believed.
A statement on why the Bible isn't partisan but is inherently political.
"Searching for God" SCRIPTURE Acts 17.22-28 with Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft
WBGH Forum Network presents a lecture with Bishop Flunder on February 28, 2020
Taking a cue from “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt we can learn what it takes to get through anything together, when we see that everyone brings their gifts to every situation. And by remembering that when lots of things change, there are a few things that never change: GOD, LOVE, JOY, GOODNESS and laughter!
In the desperate final days of Bonhoeffer's life, he wrote from prison about the futility of trying to talk to stupid people about facts, as many of his neighbors and fellow church folk simply rolled along with the Nazi movement. M. Scott Peck defined evil as a kind of "militant ignorance," a refusal to deal with the known facts of reality.
In worship at Mt Hollywood Church in LA, Sunday, Feb 16, I "channeled" William Jennings Bryan, best known as the fundamentalist Christian lawyer who defended six-day creationism in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.
“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.
Featuring Rev. Michael Dowd
Featuring eco-theologian, author, and TEDx speaker, Rev. Michael Dowd, ProFuture Faith is a dynamic eight-session DVD and internet-based course that bridges the gap between head and heart, science and faith.
Is that a word? Tittynope? Really? Who says it is or not? And, this leads Rabbi Brian to wonder about the seat of our own spiritual authority. A light video. Fun with spiritual stuff. Enjoy.
Politically Speaking host Dave Szollosy interviewed me and our conversation revolved around the issues relating to how our religion informs our politics.
I am indebted to Amy-Jill Levine's book "Short Stories by Jesus" and Bernard Brandon Scott's book "Hear Then the Parable" for challenging me to look beyond the Christian bias of interpreting Jesus' parables through the lens of the repentance and forgiveness and attempting to hear this story in ways more in keeping with Judaism.
It’s the House for all Sinners and Saints in Denver, a widely unconventional congregation led by Evangelical Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. She told correspondent Lucky Severson her language, teaching and tattoos symbolize her acceptance of everyone, and they of her. Their church is thriving.
This sermon, is a distillation of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their excellent book “The First Christmas” I am indebted to Peter Rollins for his approach to the Christmas story. Some have said that the birth of Jesus is the most amazing birth story ever told. Jesus birth narrative heralded the arrival of a child who was praised as the Son of God, the Saviour of the World who was said to be the personification of peace on earth; God incarnate; fully divine and fully human. Not everyone agrees that this is the most amazing birth story ever told. Indeed, the story of Jesus birth can’t even claim to be unique. Some claim that Jesus’ birth story is just one of a long line of birth stories. Jesus’ birth story, some claim, is only considered to be unique because it’s our story; our story that we tell over and over at the expense of other birth stories from other communities that are just as great.
When our ancestors looked into the heavens they had no way of knowing the wonders of the cosmos that we are beginning to discover. While physicists can ignore theology, theologians who ignore physics will find themselves stuck atop Job's dung-heap impotently shaking their fists at the Divine.
Jesus MATTERS – BRUNCHtalks 5 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings Audio only click here Moving beyond the sacrificial interpretation of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to explore a progressive way of following Jesus. Jesus' way of being provides hope for 21st century christian communities who embrace the LOVE we meet in the stories about Jesus that have been handed down to us. Can christian communities provide a space where people can gather together to learn how to love?
A modern Portland, Oregon rabbi explains Jesus’s messages
An outside-the-box, modern rabbi from Portland, Oregon explains the Jewish messages of Jesus. Rabbi Brian’s style is approachable, warm, honest and quirky. He quotes Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy to help explain the intent of the phrase “I am the way the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me.”
By Filmmaker Anika Gibbons
In this film, filmmaker Anika Gibbons '13 takes a deeper look at the radical spirituality and scholarship within the lives of the founding mothers of Womanist theology and Womanist ethics. She focuses on their significance as African-American theology and history, and on the role played by Union in that founding.
Mark 4:35-41
The raging storms are all around us. Racism, poverty, disease, and violence; four winds that howl so ferociously that all we can hear is the sound of people’s fears as we see the very real possibility that the bottom might just fall out of the small craft we have fashioned to navigate the troubled waters that lie ahead.
I am indebted to Jim Kast-Keat, a pioneering preacher who inspired me to open this sermon with the video below. I am also indebted to Bishop John Shelby Spong for teaching me more that I can articulate with words. His excellent book The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic opened the Gospel According to John in ways that have helped me to see aspects of the Divine to which I was once blind. Much of the sermon consists of extensive quotes from chapter 9 of Jack’s book.
The length of life does not determine its meaning. If there is an afterlife, nothing can be known about it, but the life we know with certainty calls us to live with integrity and nobility. Maya Angelou's poem, "When Great Trees Fall," movingly describes how we are affected by the death of those who have inspired us and shaped our lives. Remembering them is, perhaps, their real hope of an afterlife.