The great jazz musician Thelonious Monk once told one of his sidemen, "You're making all the wrong mistakes!" Monk was known as musician who did things differently, who played with a kind of dissonance that sounded like he was making mistakes, but that actually worked. He generally made all the right mistakes. I read that quote and realized there are right and wrong mistakes. It's OK to make the right mistakes; we just don't want to make the wrong mistakes. I have made my share of wrong mistakes. When I was a rookie pastor, I told a parishioner that I had done something, when I really hadn't done it. I was going to do it. I had every intention of doing it, and doing it quickly. But in the rush of all things I had to do, this fell between the cracks. The fact that I hadn't done it was not an issue. The fact that I lied when I said I had done it was. It became a big issue. That parishioner never really trusted me again. Call it a life lesson, but it was a very expensive life … [Read more...]

Guest commentary by Joshua Musser Gritter Parallels between the biblical narrative and modern film aren’t always easy to come by. Whether it’s the result of modernity’s false dichotomy of sacred vs. secular, or popular Christianity’s tendency to reproduce its own theological issues in its art ( such as “Passion of the Christ” or “Fireproof”), we Christians don’t always have a penchant for seeing the theological in popular movies that aren’t overtly Christian. Beyond the issues of modernity and bad Christian movies, most of us simply do not think of movies as art, but rather solely as mediums of entertainment. You go to the movies in order to withdraw from the world. You go to take a break. You go to have a laugh, to experience fear, to encounter something outside of the conflicted and confusing days in which we find ourselves. Personally, I have nothing against this great American pastime. During seminary, when I wasn’t reading Karl Barth or memorizing Hebrew declensions, I was … [Read more...]

Guest commentary by Dave Coles God’s messages in Scripture often turn on just a word or two. Take the story of the healing at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-9). John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus met an invalid there who had been seeking healing for 38 years. Here’s the backstory. Legend was that at times the Angel of the Lord would come down and stir the water in the pool. On such occasions, the first person to get into the pool after the water was stirred would be healed of his affliction. It is possible the man in this story had some form of lower extremity disability, otherwise he would not have said, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.” Stop for a minute and think what this man’s life must have been like. He had been seeking healing by coming to the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years. That is nearly a complete working lifetime for most people in 21st-century America. In fact, it is possible he could have had children and grandchildren who … [Read more...]