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.

by

Man, That Felt Good

7 comments

Categories: Things that are too good to keep

Can I share a moment of personal achievement with you?

Yesterday, I went and did something that, to my knowledge, I have never done, ever, in my whole life.

I went to the mall and bought a pair of smaller jeans.

(It was getting almost to the point that I needed to go around holding my pants up with one hand.)

In the past five weeks (since Jan. 1), I have lost 17 pounds. That’s for a total of 31 pounds since I started trying to lose weight in earnest.

To borrow a line from Stacy the Hooting Waiter:

This is a preview of Man, That Felt Good. Read the full post (102 words, 1 image, estimated 24 secs reading time)

by

Life-Altering Moments of Truth

5 comments

Categories: changing mindsets, food for thought

I don’t know about you, but looking at my history, I can see certain points where the course of my life was dramatically altered by a “moment of truth.” In other words, I encountered a certain truth or revelation that shifted my paradigm, and after that moment, life looked different for me. Looking back, I can see how my path shifted from that point on.

I think this happens to all of us. Sometimes that “moment of truth” is a revelation from God, or sometimes it’s a wake-up call of something happening of which you were perhaps previously unaware. These moments of truth can be places of great joy, or great devastation and trauma. Either way, your world is rocked when they happen.

This is a preview of Life-Altering Moments of Truth. Read the full post (801 words, 1 image, estimated 3:12 mins reading time)

by

Uh-Oh…Jeff’s Philosophizing Again

4 comments

Categories: random stuff, What the heck was THAT?

Here’s another nugget from the Official Collection of Proverbs and Random Thoughts from Jeff the Twisted, Slightly Off-Center Philosopher:

“Most, if not all, of the dysfunction in relationships stems from one of two things:
  1. People who are not willing to deal with their own crap; and
  2. People who feel they need to deal with everyone else’s crap.”
Yep.

Bookmark and Share

Permanent link to this post (60 words, 2 images, estimated 14 secs reading time)

by

Just Some of the Crazy Weird Stuff I’ve Encountered in Church Life

7 comments

Categories: random stuff, What the heck was THAT?

  • We have been invited by passers-by to visit their church on Sunday–after telling them we pastored a congregation. (This has happened more than once.)
  • A local mega-church pastor, who knew who we were, once openly tried to recruit one of our college girls to leave our house church and come to his mega-church.
  • While attending an Easter pageant at one of the larger churches in town, our teenage son was approached by a grinning church volunteer who shoved a tract in his hand, apparently assuming he was not a Christian because he was not dressed like a typical youth-grouper.
This is a preview of Just Some of the Crazy Weird Stuff I’ve Encountered in Church Life. Read the full post (379 words, 2 images, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

by

Friendship–Only the Genuine Article, Please

6 comments

Categories: Rantings

I seem to be latching on to a thread of inspiration in writing this post. I was inspired by a post Sarah wrote today…and Sarah was inspired by Alan…and Alan was inspired by Steve. (Sounds almost like a genealogy, doesn’t it?) And our posts aren’t about exactly the same thing, but they all resonate from a similar theme: the disconnectedness believers often feel in church.

Here are some highlights from Sarah’s post:

This is a preview of Friendship–Only the Genuine Article, Please. Read the full post (761 words, 1 image, estimated 3:03 mins reading time)

by

Beautifully Wrapped Empty Boxes

2 comments

Categories: food for thought

It’s awesome to watch babies and small children at Christmas and birthdays–especially when it’s their first one. It’s fun to watch them, because they just don’t get it.

Everybody sings and cheers and smiles and laughs around them, and they just look wide-eyed, with a puzzled confused look on their face.

You buy them toys, and wrap the toys as presents. Babies don’t know what to do with presents yet, so you have to tear the wrapping off for them. The baby gets excited and distracted when he/she sees the new toy, plays with it for a bit…

…and then plops down and plays with the wrapping paper and the box.

This is a preview of Beautifully Wrapped Empty Boxes. Read the full post (1207 words, 2 images, estimated 4:50 mins reading time)

by

Fences and Wells

1 comment

Categories: changing mindsets, church, food for thought

Of all the studying I’ve done over the past two years, one of the most impacting books I’ve read is The Shaping of Things to Come by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Not a quick read by any means, but full of great information and ideas about how church and ministry can be reshaped to better serve this culture. It gave some cohesion to a lot of thoughts I’d already been processing. So I’d like to give credit here and tell you that I’m borrowing ideas from that book to write this post.

In the last two posts I talked about how we’ve come to use the “sinner’s prayer” as a sort of determining factor in deciding who is “saved.” We questioned whether this is really an accurate litmus test, since conversion really is a matter of the heart, not a prayer formula. And this also begs the question: why do we even feel this need to measure this? Why are we bent on deciding who is “in” and who is “out”?

This is a preview of Fences and Wells. Read the full post (985 words, 2 images, estimated 3:56 mins reading time)

by

"Follow Me"

7 comments

Categories: food for thought, theological questions

In yesterday’s post, I posed the question as to how the “sinner’s prayer”, which has only been in practice for the last 150 years or so of the church’s history, has become such a doctrinal necessity in the evangelical church, to the point that we essentially measure conversion by whether that prayer has been prayed.

Thanks to all who replied, for your thoughtful responses. (And feel free to add yours, if you haven’t.) It’s time now for me to put in my two cents’ worth. 🙂

This is a preview of "Follow Me". Read the full post (1058 words, 1 image, estimated 4:14 mins reading time)

by

A Question to Make Your Brain Hurt…

11 comments

Categories: food for thought, theological questions

The “sinner’s prayer” is the basic prayer where we admit our sin and our need for a Savior, ask for forgiveness, and confess Jesus to be our Savior and Lord. It is generally considered by evangelicals to be the moment when someone is “saved”, when a spiritual conversion and rebirth takes place, and that person becomes a “new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17).

However…out of the approximate two thousand year history since the church was born…the “sinner’s prayer” has been part of our practice for less than 150 years.

This is a preview of A Question to Make Your Brain Hurt…. Read the full post (162 words, 1 image, estimated 39 secs reading time)
1 2 … 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 … 81 82