On this Eve of Thanksgiving I’m grateful to be surrounded by love, and grateful for the opportunity to journey with you all through the seasons of life. Thanksgiving weekend has become the major get together for my side of the family and we will be heading out to Bellefontaine tomorrow and arriving back to Columbus for Sunday worship. Speaking of which…we are entering the season of Advent.  When the planning group got together we settled on a single word to guide us through the season: Disruption.  It shows up in the texts in different ways, which lead to the ultimate disruption of Christ’s birth and all the ways Christ is continually born when we take a similar posture as Mary, a willingness to bear Christ in our bodies as an offering to the world. The first week of Advent focuses on what is often called the “Second Coming,” or what

Greetings from Bluffton, Ohio.  This week I am the speaker for Spiritual Life Week at Bluffton University which also comes with the perk of getting to hang out with various students, faculty, and staff.  The theme for the week, which we chose way back in the summer, is “No fear in love,” that delightful short phrase drawn from 1 John 4 which says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect loves drives out fear.”  This was one of our Twelve Scriptures passages and it felt like one that had a lot more depth to explore.  Much more than just occasional emotions, fear and love are like two different operating systems, the program behind all the other programs through which everything gets filtered.  I spoke at student worship Sunday evening, forum yesterday, and will have a final presentation at chapel tomorrow. Some observations while on campus: + Students love their

I just completed reading (listening to, audio-book) 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (thanks for the loan Phil H).  One of the best things this book does is to question, and more often dismantle, commonly held myths about the Americas and the people who lived here before European contact.  Mann utilizes both the latest archeological and genetic findings, along with the earliest European accounts of contact with Indian peoples.  Although the details continue to be up for debate, there is an emerging scholarly consensus that the pre-1492 Americas of our text books and cultural myths, and the Americas as they actually were before European contact are two very different places.  Here are a few things I learned: – I had known that disease was a significant killer of American Indians, but had not realized the extent to which it decimated whole populations and civilizations. 

These past couple weeks have been quite eventful for Columbus Mennonite Church because of all the press we have received related to my installation.  I really appreciated Joel’s thoughts from last week’s blog about how we might respond to people who do not affirm the congregation’s decision to call me to a pastoral role.  I like all of his suggestions, but I thought I would add one of my own: + Practice the discipline of being willing to say “I don’t know.”  I think that too often we approach situations of difference from a stance of competition or debate.  This frame of mind diminishes true dialogue because it creates a system of winners and losers where the goal is less about growth than about digging in to our already entrenched positions.  When we frame these interactions as debates we lose a sense of the growth that both parties can have

In the last week and a half Columbus Mennonite has been in both The Mennonite and the Mennonite World Review because of our hiring of Mark.  In this digital world, stories travel fast on social media and comments become just as publicly accessible as the story itself.  The large majority of responses we’ve received through the office have been enthusiastically supportive.  I’m aware that a number of you have had personal interactions with friends and family members, not all of them affirming of our path.  I don’t mean for the following to come off as overly advice column-ish, but for those more difficult conversations, here are some thoughts and hopes for how we might enter those in a way that builds on our common humanity and avoids excessive polarization. + Find something to affirm in the other person.  Most folks speak out of a genuine concern, and wish to be