Posts from the Blog of an (un)Tamed Cynic
Here’s another sobering riff on the theme of “18 years“. Last week the Office of the General Assembly released the 2012 statistics for the Presbyterian Church (USA). The numbers aren’t good, more signs of our rapid decline (and the similar decline of all mainline Protestant—and even evangelical—denominations). Our membership has dropped to 1,849,496. This represents [...]
Several weeks ago I had coffee with a woman whose wisdom and insight I greatly respect. She is the mother of three children, one of which is in high school, one of which is in college, and the oldest of which is out of college. We were talking about youth ministry and the types of [...]
Reading: Acts 10:1-33 Reflection In college I was introduced to the historical and critical study of religion. As it applies to my own Christian faith, this approach has helped me realize that religion is never static. Rather, religion is always dynamic and changing. Such thinking would have been considered heretical in the conservative churches in [...]
This past Saturday, my friend and colleague Hardy Kim and I put on an East vs West BBQ throwdown as a fundraiser for our friends Kurt Esslinger and Hyeyoung Lee, who will be serving as PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer site coordinators in Korea. The fine people at Declan’s Irish Pub hosted us, providing space for [...]
I preached this sermon on Sunday after taking a DMin course at McCormick Theological Seminary called “Why Church Matters in a Culture of Narcissism” with Lillian Daniel. The text for this sermon was 1 Peter 2:1-10. Some of this repeats things I wrote last week and things I’ve been thinking and writing about for some [...]
