This Sunday, I begin a new series called "Repentance: The Theology of Apology". I invite you to prepare, along with me, to hear and discern God's Word!Some Information about this three-part series, beginning September 13 [...]
In today's sermon, entitled "The Melian Debate," I am posing two differing ways of thinking about history - and I might add, different understandings of international and political relations among human beings. Today's sermon offers [...]
The sermon that I gave this morning deals with the question, Is it right that our society self-consciously and self avowedly employs the method of torture in the effort to keep us safe?Without repeating the [...]
For you folk who want to cut to the chase, here's the question for this week: Does the gospel (and the scriptures in general) speak to how we ought to treat the stranger in our [...]
Friends! Jeff V. here. I see it's been a long time since an entry has appeared in this space. Blogging is harder to do (especially as a collective enterprise) than I'd thought. I will continue [...]
Perhaps lighter, simpler fare this week. No big theological stuff. Stories! Provided by...YOU! Jeff here again, doing blog duty. Next week - Mary Alice...you tuning in?Here's the question for the week: how are YOU making meaning [...]
We all know the story. Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem. No room in the inn. A stable is all they can find for their nightly digs.We might picture the typical first-century travel experience as [...]
Black Friday was indeed a black day. There were incidents throughout the country of death and violence connected to the door buster sales offered. There was the 34-year-old man who was trampled to death when [...]
As Christians, do we have a list of people or countries that we would consider evil and if so, who would they be? The phrase, "Axis of Evil" has been recently used by our president [...]
Unfortunately, we regressed in our Blog participation last week - after a record 8 comments on our question, "How Would Jesus Vote?", we got a grand total of...zip, zero, nada...last week. I'm sure folks were [...]
This week's blog question is on a topic that we're all thinking about - especially us'ns who are in the church biz: money. It's stewardship season! And although we emphasize that stewardship (a vastly misunderstood [...]
The question for this week has to do with what we're all thinking about...well, at least one of the things we can't avoid thinking about: the election.Obviously, I mean for the title of this entry [...]
Jeff V. writing here.... I'm back after a long summer's nap. This post is really an attempt to re-establish our blogging practice as a church...and that's the subject of the post.I've obviously been rather reluctant [...]
As a response to my sermon last week, a church member forwarded to me Beliefnet's daily joke (http://www.beliefnet.com/dailyjoke/DailyJoke.aspx?QID=3621). Though I usually delete without reading the joke emails that people send to me, I'm thinking of [...]
Did Jesus Laugh?This is the central question around which the mystery novel The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, turns—a book most worthy of reading, not only for its clever plot, but for the [...]
I write as I watch the Academy Awards Ceremony...a true procrastinator, as you all already know. I'm behind on my blog entry this week. And I want Mark Smith also to know that I am [...]
First, some bonus material on last week's theme...dealing with Character and Suffering. Stuff that was left on the cutting room floor. I'm repeating this from a post I did last week, because I thought folk [...]
