Please consider forwarding this to every white pastor or priest you know.
My friend Rob Spencer models the kind of sermon that I believe every white pastor across America needs to preach -- to break the silence about white supremacy in our churches. If you need inspiration, you'll find it here. You may shed a few tears too. It lasts 30 minutes, and begins at 0:29:00.
https://www.facebook.com/connectionsparis/videos/803104350220553
Rob and his congregation followed up this sermon with action, and the process continues. Of course there is push-back. How could there not be in this country, with its history? God bless pastors who take the risk of breaking the sound barrier on race, and then follow up words with actions.
0 Comments1 Minute
Celebrating a Life of Wonder, Goodness, and Creativity
Early this morning, dear friend and creative collaborator Fran McKendree passed from this life, leaving a rich legacy of friendship and creative vitality behind.
I had the bittersweet joy of visiting him last month, seeing his body made frail by cancer, but his spirit as alive and saturated with kindness as ever.
Below you'll find a few of our creative collaborations.
https://franmckendree.com/track/2187725/if-we-don-t-have-love
Thanks be to God for a genuine human being, a friend, husband to Diana, a stellar musician and gatherer of awakening souls, a person in whose presence God's presence was as real as a wink and a smile.
0 Comments1 Minutes
A Reader Writes: I Now Live with No Roof
I'm writing to tell you how absolutely grateful I am for your book, Faith After Doubt. I just graduated from a conservative, fundie, evangelical college with a BA in Christian Ministries, but I'm deconstructing my faith. I've felt pretty screwed, but reading your book has given me a fresh peace and hope for what can still be done and experienced in the Church from my expanding outlooks.Some highlights of your book for me have been the threads of comparative theology, practical theology, ecumenism(!!!), humanism, even universalism at times, and this idea of spiritual entrepreneurship. As a visionary and unity-seeker, I find all of this to be quite enthralling and wildly motivating. I'm an enneagram 8 and an ENFJ on Myers Briggs. I want to pounce on the problems I see and persuade people to change for the better. I heard it for myself when you told Hannah, that “’You may have lost your faith,’ I said, ‘but you sure haven’t lost your fire.’” (189). I think, at the end of the day, even if I’m disappointed at many demonstrations of faith that I see around me, I will still have the fire that pushes me forward, up and out into the world, through the glass ceiling of gatekeepers and into the expansively mystical, colorful sky of harmony.
Having read your book, I now feel truly encouraged that there is always room to grow. I now live with no roof, floating around, flexible spirit, open-mind, awestruck eyes – perhaps like a bird, or a plane, but definitely not superman. Thank God for that!Thanks again. I'll be carrying your words with me.
0 Comments2 Minutes
We Make the Road by Walking – more help for pastors, teachers, and group leaders
Churches around the world have used We Make the Road by Walking for a year-long overview of the whole Bible - from a fresh perspective. Together with many helpful readers, we've amassed a lot of excellent resources to help in making the book useful.
A Dutch reader, Hanny Rohm, wanted to be able to find where in the book specific Scripture passages were discussed. Hanny decided to create such a list. Here it is (in Dutch, but it's easy to translate). The number in parentheses is the page number from the Dutch edition. Other editions may vary slightly.
We make the road by walking (Brian McLaren)
Genesis 1:1-2:3 (33), 2:4-25 (8), 3:1-13 (18), 4:1-17 (23), 6:5-8 (23), 7:1-5 (23), 8:1 (23), 9:7-17 (23), 12:1-9 (29), 18:9-33 (33), 22:1-14 (33), 32:22-33-11 (38), 50:15-21 (38)
Exodus 1:1-14 (43), 3:1-15 (43), 20:1-21 (49) /// Leviticus /// Numeri /// Deuteronomium 7:1-11 (55), 15:1-11 (234) /// Jozua /// Richteren /// Ruth /// 1 Samuel ///
2 Samuel 11:26-12:15 (118) /// 1 Koningen 3 (106) /// 2 Koningen 2:1-15 (61) 1 Kronieken /// Ezra /// Nehemia /// Esther /// Job 10 (199) /// Psalmen 8 (8), 19 (3), 22 (194), 23 (61), 25 (216), 33 (18), 34:1-18 (92), 51 (23), 77 (199), 88 (199), 90 (305), 98 (300), 103 (223), 116 (259), 117 (101), 122 (183), 126 (310), 133 (210), 137:1-9 (55), 145: 1-16 (13), 146 (228), 149 (55) /// Spreuken 3:1-26 (124), 4 (271), 8:1-36 (13, 277) /// Prediker 1:1-11 (199) /// Hooglied /// Jesaja 1:1-2:5 (67), 7:14 (82), 9:2-7 (82), 40:9-11 (77), 40:27-31 (239), 42:1-9+53 (141), 60:1-3 (97), 61:1-4 (112) /// Jeremia 31:31-34 (124), 32:31-35 (87) /// Klaagliederen /// Ezechiel 34 (130), 37:1-14 (205) /// Daniel 7:9-28 (77) /// Hosea /// Joel /// Amos /// Obadja /// Jona 4 (135) /// Micha 5:2-5a (87), 17:19-34 (33) /// Nahum /// Habakuk /// Sefanja /// Haggai /// Zacharia 9:9-10 (183) /// Maleachi
NIEUWE TESTAMENT (NT):
Mattheus 1:1-17 (92), 1:18-2:15 (87), 2:1-12 (101), 5:1-16 (157), 5:17-48 (162), 6:1-18 (168), 6:19-7:12 (173), & 6:25-34 (3), 7:13-29 (178), 9:10-17 (67), 10:16-20 (228), 11:28-30 (228), 15:21-39 (55), 16:13-17:9 (141), 22:34-40 (49), 23:1-12 (283), 25:31-40 (38, 135), 28:16-20 (228) /// Markus 1:21-28 (118), 2:1-19 (147), 3:1-6 (8), 4:1-34 (124), 11:15-19 (29) /// Lukas 1:5-55 (82), 1:67-79 (77), 2:8-20 (92), 2:25-32 (101), 2:39-3:14 (107), 3:21-22 (107), 4:11-30 (112), 5:1-11 (112), 5:17-32 (130), 10:1-11, 17-20 (216), 10:25-37 (38), 15:11-32 (316), 16:19-31 (135), 18:15-19:9 (130), 19:29-46 (183), 20:27-38 (305), 22:39-23:56 (194), 24:1-32 (205) /// Johannes 1:1-17 (13) & 1:1-5, 9-10 (97), 2:1-12 (118), 3:1-21 (249) & 3:19-21 (92), 8:1-11 (43), 8:12 (97), 9:5 (97), 12:35-36, 46 (97), 13-17 (188), 13:1-15 (283), 14:15-18, 25-27 (300), 15:1-8 (254), 15:26-27 (300), 16:33 (300), 17:1-23 (277), 20 (210), 21:1-15 (216) /// Handelingen 1:1-11 (61), 2:41-47 (222 & 249), 4:1-31 (294), 8:26-40 (210), 9:1-25 (239), 10 (265), 16:11-40 (228), 17:19-34 (33) /// Romeinen 15:1-13 (67), 6:1-14 (249), 8:31-39 (316), 12:1-2 (82), 12:3-21 (271) /// 1 Korinthiers 3:9-15 (300), 14:26-31 (222), 13 (265), 15:20-28 (300), 15:50-58 (316) /// 2 Korinthiers 6:1-10 (239), 8:1-15 (234) & 8:1-17 (259), 11:22-33 (239) /// Galaten 3:6-9 (29), 3:19-4:7 (254), 5:1 & 13-15 (43) & 5:1 & 23-26 (254) /// Efeziers 3:14-21 (259), 4:1-16 (277), 5:15-6:9 (288), 6:10-20 (294) /// Filippenzen 1:20-30 (305), 2:1-11 (283) & 2:3-11 (18), 3:12-14 (intro XIV) /// Kolossenzen 1:9-29 (205), 2:6-7 (254), 3:1-17 (254) & 3:12-17 (222) /// 1 Tessalonicenzen 5:1-11 (294) ///
2 Tessalonicenzen /// 1 Timotheus 4:6-16 (106), 6:3-19 (234) /// 2 Timotheus 1:1-14 (294), 2:1-9 (112) /// Titus /// Filemon 1:8-19 (288) /// Hebreeen 10:1-18 (49), 11:1-8 (147), 13:1-8 (288) /// Jakobus 1:2-8 (271), 3:13-18 (271), 4:1-8 (23), 5:1-6 (288) /// 1 Petrus /// 2 Petrus /// 1 Johannes 1:1-2:6 (147) /// 2 Johannes /// 3 Johannes /// Judas /// Openbaring 1:9-19 (310), 19:11-16 (310), 21:1-8 (310), 22:16-21 (310)
0 Comments7 Minutes
Why Pastors are Quitting
Since my book Faith After Doubt came out, I've been receiving a steady stream of emails from people thanking me for helping them understand what they're going through. I'm hearing from many, many pastors too. Here's an excerpt from a recent email:
I wanted to reach out and say thank you for putting Faith After Doubt out into the world.The last handful of years I've read very little in the realm of Christian theology/ecclesiology/whateverology. I just couldn't handle too many excursions into such waters while trying to keep faith in Jesus and pastor a church in TRUMP's America. One touch-point I've held onto is the daily reflections from the CAC. When I read one last month with an excerpt from your book, it felt like the right message at the right time for me. As I started reading, your narrative of moving through the stages felt almost autobiographical. I have been hovering between Perplexity and Harmony for some time now. I think the radical revealing of the white evangelical church in the 2016 election was when I first started asking the question, "Is the church in America a net gain for compassion in the universe?"Since then my own spiritual journey has been deepened through long excursions of silence and solitude in wild places and by perspectives rooted in the natural world like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Aldo Leopold, and Wendell Berry. It's been a liberating and life-giving opening up to other ways of knowing and being. At the same time, my sense of connection and belonging to the church and my pastoral vocation within it has been deeply strained. This past year, the pandemic and the politicization of responses to it, anger about restrictions, the Black Lives Matter movement, the most divisive and hateful election in our history, and our denomination coming to a breaking point around LGBT inclusion have all formed a confluence of stressors at a time when we're missing most of the tools I'm used to utilizing to build community... There are many days where I think, "If you gave me a viable exit strategy and handed me a ripcord, I'd pull that thing so fast it would make your head spin!"I trust you that there is a good and beautiful field in which Harmony is Reality on the far side of perplexity. I've already been making excursions there! I just don't know if I can dwell there and remain a pastor. As you clearly know, that is a pretty sobering thought to engage when I have invested my whole life up to this point in this work.On page 185 you frame two questions, "In this chapter, I hold out hope that our religious institutions can take on this mission of moral and spiritual development. But I have to admit that sometimes I feel I am hitting my head against a closed box. How do you feel about the possibility of some significant sector of organized religion taking on this vital task? If religious institutions don't do so, who will?" I'm going to sit with those questions for this next season of life.My honest knee-jerk response is, "I don't know Brian, and I'm too fucking tired and beat up to care." My second response is, "I don't know Brian, but I remember what it felt like to be immersed in shame and fear-based Christianity, I know that the difference between that and where I am now feels like the difference between death and life, I want to believe there is a way to shepherd others who are brave enough to make that journey, and I want to hope the church as we've known it can evolve to aid that work."All that to say, by being vulnerable and transparent with your journey you have given this fellow pilgrim a sense of solidarity and some more tools to make sense of my own life and faith. I really don't know if I'll stick it out as a pastor for the long haul, but using your definition of Harmony, I think I have a pretty good chance of sticking it out with faith.
0 Comments9 Minutes