Liturgies

Yielding to God’s Ecumenical Embrace

British cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees’ book, Just Six Numbers, explains how six basic values may define the universe and make life possible. Here is something I often say when meeting someone for the first time: “I’d love to hear your story.” Those six words frequently reveal surprising facts about someone, and, like Rees’ mathematical values, they can make connecting with someone in a meaningful way possible.

For Julaine and me, our story has included embracing Roman Catholicism, the Calvary Chapel Movement, Vineyard Churches, Foursquare/Hope Chapel Churches, American Baptist Churches, Non-denominationalism, and Anglicanism, before a brief stint in Methodism.

Demystifying the “Social Gospel: God’s Ultimate Act of Socializing”

In my first book, A Story of Rhythm and Grace, I wrote that I had lived in two worlds: performing in popular music, where racial tolerance was prized, and serving as a pastor in predominantly white evangelical churches that preached love of God and neighbor. Yet I found more genuine racial harmony on stage while touring than inside church buildings or among my white ministry colleagues. My lived reality was that the secular world of rock and roll was more welcoming and affirming than the institution built on the command to love one’s neighbor. The book was not an indictment of the Church; it was an observation about it.

Racism, the unpardonable or unrepentant sin?

Recently, I came across a 2012 interview with John Tyler’s grandson as he toured his family’s Virginia plantation on YouTube. Tyler was the tenth U.S. president, born in 1790, yet he had a third-generation descendant alive in the 2010s. That means three generations of the Tylers’ lives spanned three centuries.

What amazed me even more was how casually his grandson explained how he came to own the large plantation: it was an inheritance. Sadly, if someone had pointed out that it was enslaved Africans who built the very structure he was living in, it would have been met with some form of “I don’t want to hear that.” None of us wants to, but I am afraid we must. Here is why.