Peripatetic Pastor

Tag: Synod 2024

  • SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD

    I should have called a recent blog piece, “The Way of Doubt.” Instead, I called it, “The Quest for a Moral Center, Part 1”— a title simultaneously drab and misleading. The piece was not about finding a moral center but about doubt: how doubt often leads in the direction of renewed faith. Doubt, I suggested,…

  • THE QUEST FOR A MORAL CENTER: PART 1

    IDENTITY There are moments—and questions—for which the blog format does not well serve the purposes that I and perhaps you have for it. The topic that I raise in this post may be one such.  Lately I’ve been thinking about identity. Who we are in the deepest sense. How we form identity. What’s makes for…

  • INSIGHT AND IDOLATRY

    For the last long while in this blogspace, I have mostly had my nose to the proverbial grindstone, sharpening my responses to decisions made by recent Christian Reformed synods—synods which adopted for human sexuality a punitively rightwing version of church teaching. In doing so, these synods have purposely excluded churches and church leaders who differ…

  • WHAT’S NEXT: WISPS OF A DREAM

    Dwell not on former things; Ponder not the past. Look, I’m doing a new thing. It’s already sprouting up; do you not see it? (Isaiah 43:18-19a) I confess I do not yet see it, the new thing sprouting up. Perhaps it is still too early. Perhaps the past is too much with us, with me.…

  • RIP CRC

    “Jesus called [his disciples] over and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their big people rule over them, but not so among you. If anyone among you wants to be great, let them be your servant, and if anyone wants to be first, let them be your…

  • NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS FOR SYNOD 2024: GRAVAMEN

    Synod 2024 of the Christian Reformed Church begins meeting in person on June 14. Until then and while synod is in session, I hope to offer a few notes and observations about the synodical process. This synod could mark the beginning of the end for the CRC or, perhaps, the beginning of something new. I…