Peripatetic Pastor

Author: Clay Libolt

  • THE ROAD TAKEN

    THE ROAD TAKEN This reflection began as a conversation with an old friend. As our conversations do, we wandered here and there and eventually into Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” the poem that begins famously: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I…

  • TRAJECTORIES

    WHERE IS ALL THIS GOING? In a recent and fascinating Substack post on white flight in Grand Rapids in the 1960s and 70s,  Kent Hendricks (my nephew) groups the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) of the time into three “minds.” He calls these three “pietist,” “confessionalist,” and “transformationalist.” In this, Hendricks follows a 1974  Reformed Journal article in which Nicholas Wolterstorff…

  • FACE TO FACE

    A SUNDAY MEDITATION Sometimes in a day things seem to add up, to make a point. Of course, many days are not like this. They seem to go first this way and then that, randomly. But occasionally what comes one’s way in a day seems, well, directional. For me, this past Sunday was a such…

  • A LARGER HOSPITALITY

    THE LESSON OF HOMER’S ODYSSEY Indulge me. I know that you come to my blog expecting something biblical and theological. I hope to continue to meet your expectations most times, turning up an insight here and there into the faith that most of us profess. This piece is not of that sort. In a way,…

  • ACCEPTING RIGHTEOUSNESS

    READING ROMANS Curious how a word or a phrase can jump out at you in a passage you’ve read countless times before. Preparing for my last post, Thinking Salvation, reading Romans 5 for, I don’t know, the thousandth time, what jumped out at me was verse 17, where Paul suggests that if we are to live…

  • THINKING SALVATION: Salvation in the Real World

    SAVED FROM WHAT? I’ve been thinking lately about salvation. “Salvation” is an odd sort of word. We rarely use it outside the church. Certainly, in a setting like this—a blog entitled The Peripatetic Pastor—you would expect any discussion of salvation to be biblical and theological, something perhaps in answer to the question: What must I do…

  • RESISTING INTERPRETATION

    For my on-again, off-again, series of posts on renewing theology, I have been thinking lately about salvation. Salvation is at the heart of Christian theology, but what does it mean? How should it be understood? There’s much to consider in those questions. But sitting in church this morning past, the lectionary and the sermon turned…

  • THE P0SSIBILITY OF CALVINISM

    PONDERING DOUGLAS STUART’S JOHN OF JOHN Calvinism is often misunderstood—even by Calvinists. Consider Douglas Stuart’s new novel, John of John (2026), set on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. Famous for its tweeds with their intricate combinations of natural colors, Harris is a hard, stony place. The local crofters eke…

  • THE COMING WRATH

    THE BAPTIST’S QUESTION In his third chapter, Matthew tells the story of John the Baptist. Or, more accurately, John the Washer. Or, perhaps, John the Dunker. Baptizō in Greek, the word from which we get “baptize,” means “to dip in water,” “to dunk,” before it comes in the New Testament to take on the meanings we give…

  • Bonhoeffer on Stupidity

    This from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Prologue to Letters and Papers from Prison, translated by Lisa E. Cahill, et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015, Kindle edition, page 9). By stupidity, Bonhoeffer means a sort of willed ignorance. Stupid people can be, often are, intellectually capable. It requires no other comment. On Stupidity  Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy…