Wayward Son

Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo. I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.

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Ten Years Ago Today–and Today

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Categories: General

September 11, 2001.

9/11 is one of those moments where most people can remember what they were doing when they first heard the news.

Ten years ago today, I was homeless. Not on-the-streets homeless, but between homes, staying with my family in an extended stay hotel. I first heard the news about the first plane on the car radio, as I was driving our laundry down the street to a nearby laundromat. The laundromat had a television, so as I (hurriedly) did the laundry, I watched in horror as the drama continued to unfold. By the time I was finished, the Pentagon had been hit, and we all knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that America was under attack.

This is a preview of Ten Years Ago Today–and Today. Read the full post (617 words, 1 image, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

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Closing One Chapter and Opening a New One

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Categories: My Story, Tags: , ,

The walls are plain and bare.

Over the past couple of years, the walls of our little flat have filled up with fine art photographs and paintings that my wife, The Wild One, has created.  Now all those pieces are safely bubble-wrapped and waiting to be moved.

When we first moved into this place, there were literally boxes floor to ceiling, so many that we could barely move. It’s starting to get that way again, as we pack up our stuff. It’s getting harder to figure out how to move from one side of the apartment to the other–a stark reminder of how tiny this place really is.

This is a preview of Closing One Chapter and Opening a New One. Read the full post (1130 words, estimated 4:31 mins reading time)

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Repairing the Church’s Reputation-Or Not

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Categories: food for thought, Tags: ,

So I was reading a blog post this morning on a blog I just discovered thanks to a friend. I had some mixed feelings about where the guy was going with his thoughts, but in particular I found his opening remarks very insightful. Here’s a snippet:

“Have you noticed all the Christians apologizing for the church? I have.  It’s kind of the thing to do.  We assume everyone out there has been hurt, wronged, isolated, burned or ostracized by the church.  It’s almost the battle cry of my generation. ‘We’ve been emotionally wounded by the church!’ Ever since Donald Miller made it popular, some Christians just can’t resist telling everyone what jerks we’ve all been.”

This is a preview of Repairing the Church’s Reputation-Or Not. Read the full post (1185 words, estimated 4:44 mins reading time)

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Update on Me (for Those Who Are Interested)

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Categories: How I am, Tags:

In case anyone out there waits on pins and needles for me to post on Sunday mornings…my apologies for skipping last weekend. 🙂 I filled in last week at the church where I used to help out with worship, and have been otherwise swamped with extra details and stress over the past couple of weeks, in addition to my normal writing responsibilities.

That said, things are good. In my last post, I rambled on about trusting God in seasons of uncertainty, and I’m finding (as I expected) that the unanswered questions are being answered one by one, in a positive manner.

This is a preview of Update on Me (for Those Who Are Interested). Read the full post (562 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

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Seasons of Uncertainty

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Categories: Meanderings (look it up), Tags:

It seems like for many of us, it is one of those seasons when there is a lot of uncertainty in the air. We can see it even on a national level–as I write this, lawmakers are doing eleventh-hour scrambling to come up with a debt-ceiling deal deadline that they’ve seen coming for months (don’t EVEN get me started), and that’s causing a lot of uneasiness on a global scale. On a more personal level, I feel a lot of uncertainty around me and my family right now. Our current lease runs out at the end of August, and at this point we really need to move into a bigger place–but we’ve been so manic busy that we’ve barely even had a chance to look at what’s out there. And there’s all the other questions that come along with it–how much rent will we have to pay, what will be available at the time we need to move, wanting to make sure we move into a safe neighborhood that’s still affordable, and having the deposit money at that time we need it–all those variables that need to fall into place in a fairly short time span.

This is a preview of Seasons of Uncertainty. Read the full post (642 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

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Letting the Expression Fit the Need

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Categories: Meanderings (look it up), Tags: , , ,

Well, it looks like it’s time to take a step of faith. After spending nearly two years embedding myself in the local music scene, and finding several believers in the midst (and after being deliberately slow to act for awhile), I’m going to try getting a few of these musicians and artists together for a Bible study, to talk about faith, art, and the role of our art in mission.

I have no idea how it’s going to go, or how many people will turn up.  It’s definitely an experiment.  But I won’t know if it’s a good thing to do unless I try it.

This is a preview of Letting the Expression Fit the Need. Read the full post (889 words, estimated 3:33 mins reading time)

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Wonders In the Sky Above

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Categories: random stuff, Things that Are Amazingly Awesome, Tags: ,

Well, it looks like here in Denver we’re about to get a taste of the massive heat wave plaguing the nation’s midsection. (Predicted high today: 99 Fahrenheit.) But for the past several days the thunderstorms hitting this area have produced a lot of drama–not just street flooding and stuff like that, but I mean drama in the sky.

This is a preview of Wonders In the Sky Above. Read the full post (617 words, 1 image, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

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Experiential Faith (part 2)

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Categories: food for thought, Meanderings (look it up), Tags: , , ,

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to get the full context for part 2, you’re going to have to read part 1.

In part 1, I rambled on about how I believe that faith in God must involve experiencing Him as well as believing in Him. In this post, I’d like to ramble some more, particularly talking about what experiential faith involves, what it might look like.

This is a preview of Experiential Faith (part 2). Read the full post (1303 words, 1 image, estimated 5:13 mins reading time)

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Experiential Faith

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Categories: food for thought, Meanderings (look it up), Tags: , ,

You know, one inherent danger in blogging about this stuff (especially for people like me who tend to over-think), is that if we aren’t careful, we can end up approaching God, the church, theology and all the rest strictly as a mental exercise. I have some blogger friends who have vacated the online discussion simply because they got tired of talking theology and wanted to get back to simple, real-life stuff. I also know that when we try to approach God completely from the perspective of the mind, we’re bound to fall short. Inevitably there are going to be unanswered questions and apparent contradictions, and in some cases it has even caused people at different times to question their faith or abandon it completely.

This is a preview of Experiential Faith. Read the full post (1040 words, estimated 4:10 mins reading time)

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Questions of Authority

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Categories: General, Meanderings (look it up), moments of truth, Tags: , , ,

Sorry for not posting in a little while…I sort of missed my weekly slot last weekend because I filled in as worship leader at the church community where I used to lead, so the current worship leader could go off to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and see Mumford and Sons play while it was snowing in June in the mountains and see the clouds part to reveal the snow-covered mountains just as they finished playing.

Lucky stiff. Anyhow.

This is a preview of Questions of Authority. Read the full post (1106 words, estimated 4:25 mins reading time)
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