Calvin & Coffee: Word — Spirit
[This is part of an ongoing series of posts I am calling "Calvin & Coffee"] I just finished ch. IX in Book I of Calvin’s Institutes. Here we see the insistence that Word and Spirit are conjoined...
View ArticlePastors, Preaching, and the Academy’s Process of Peer-Review
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1) After almost a decade of pastoral ministry, I am now firmly...
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Herman Melville, Ship Surgeons, Appendectomies, and Preaching
Q recently hosted a 2-day, 8-session event in NYC called Q Sessions | Practices with Eugene Peterson. Two of the conversations, “Practicing Sabbath” and “Immersed in Scripture” are available here. I...
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Divine Judgment… to the Soundtrack of Worship? (the hardest sermon I’ve ever...
I have preached on a number of hard texts over the years. None harder than the passage I was recently assigned at Kings Church Durham: Revelation 15-16. Seven angels bearing seven plague-bowls emerge...
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An Interview with Vito Aiuto of the Welcome Wagon
[A new dimension for HR's new site is a focus on Art, Theology and Culture. Chris Breslin will be leading our forays into the world of music searching for lyrics and tunes that wrestle with the raw...
View ArticleThe Poet William Wordsworth on the Pastor-Theologian
I visited Rydal Mount a few weeks ago, the home of poet William Wordsworth. My father-in-law was visiting us here in England, so we spent a couple of days in “the Lakes” (besides my father-in-law,...
View ArticleCelebrity Culture, the “Speaking Circuit,” and John the Baptist
I am one of those tortured-soul types. And this post is an invitation into one of my ongoing struggles. (“Welcome all you suckers to Struggleville” as my friend Bill Mallonee used to sing). The...
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Preaching Fools: A Conversation with Chuck Campbell on Preaching, Folly, and...
When I took a preaching class in seminary, I never expected it to be such a creative launching pad for me. We listened and watched all kinds of preaching and preachers and focused on different, and...
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Preaching Fools: A Conversation with Chuck Campbell on Preaching, Folly, and...
When I took a preaching class in seminary, I never expected it to be such a creative launching pad for me. We listened and watched all kinds of preaching and preachers and focused on different, and...
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2012 Music Review: Twelve Favorites
Over the past several years I’ve gotten in the December habit of compiling lists of my favorite music releases. While I was in seminary taking preaching classes, I sought out an exercise that would...
View ArticleWhen A Sermon Mystifies more than Explains
I love preaching. It darn near kills me, but I love it. In trying to be a better preacher, I am thinking more intently and prayerfully about the practice and theology of this curious, holy, frightful,...
View ArticleShould Preaching be Entertaining?
I asked in the previous post if preaching should be entertaining. My thinking is that preaching must ultimately be, like the Christian Scriptures, engaging. That is, preaching must arrest the mind,...
View ArticleLeaving the Chaplaincy at St Mary’s College: Looking back…
I began serving as Chaplain to St Mary’s College at Durham University at the start of 2013. By this summer’s close, my tenure will end. When I began working full-time at St John’s College at the start...
View ArticleThe Noise of Pentecost
[Adapted from my sermon this morning at Bethany City Church on Acts 2:1–13. A couple of more posts will follow…] The first Pentecost was loud. It was an interruption. Today, we may prefer a quiet,...
View ArticlePentecost and the Marvel Universe
[This piece continues a brief series on Pentecost premised on a sermon I preached on Acts 2 at Bethany City Church. See the first installment here.] Jesus told the disciples just days before Pentecost...
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