On Sunday, March 24th, 2019, I gave what I can now call the worst sermon I’ve ever delivered.

Not from a content or delivery perspective. But from a failure to read the room and using the pulpit to try and control a narrative. A crisis was brewing in our congregation and my frightened ego had more influence on what I preached that day than was wise.

It’s taken me years to fully digest what transpired, but now I think back on that morning with equal parts cringe, shame, and sadness.

So naturally, I want to write about it. Such is the blessing/curse of the writer/memoirist.

(I will say upfront that I’ve tried to make amends with the ones I hurt the most that morning. I don’t know if I’ve gotten to all of them, so in the event anyone ends up reading this who remembers that sermon, and remembers feeling not-okay with it, please know that I’m sorry. Your unease made and makes sense.)

The Situation Surrounding that Horrible Sermon

It’s hard to tell the story of that horrible sermon without giving a full picture of the context that led to it. And it’s hard to give the full context without telling stories that aren’t (exclusively or wholly) mine to tell. So forgive me if part of this feels unsatisfactory and/or vague. The story may only kind of make sense because you won’t be able to fully comprehend the context, but I think that’s okay. You’ll get it enough.

However, there is a risk when leaving some gaps unfilled. I’m opening myself up to you making certain assumptions or drawing conclusions that aren’t real or true. But in the name of privacy, those are risks I accept.

Okay enough throat clearing. Here’s what I’ll say regarding the events leading up to that absurd sermon I preached.

Five weeks prior to Sunday, March 24th, we had a disastrous Elder Board meeting involving emotional disruptions, deep disagreements, and hurt feelings.

All of which were made worse by my lack of leadership.

You see, at that point our church was about five years old and I was still serving as the Chair of the Board. It’s not uncommon in the church and in the non-profit world for the leader/president/pastor to also run the Board in the organization’s infancy, but I really should have transitioned out of that role by year five. Trying to run a Board, lead a church, and co-pastor with a spouse was a recipe for disaster.

And boy did disaster strike.

Many painful things resulted from the fallout of that tragic Board meeting, but germane to this article I’ll just say that the immediate impact was: a Board member resigned, multiple families left the church, and we lost some of my dearest and closest friends.

In fact, 2019 was such an awful year (because of the fallout) that personally, the pandemic isolation of 2020 was a welcome respite.

Details of that infamous Board meeting, and what led to the eruption and eventual exodus of key families and close friends, shall remain private. But I can tell you that I have many regrets about the choices I made during that time. Looking back I can see how some of my instincts and intentions were noble, but the impact of certain choices had devastating consequences. While trying to defend and protect someone I loved, I hurt and alienated other people I loved.

That makes me sound better than I was… so let me be clear: those efforts to “defend and protect someone I loved” were not executed perfectly by any means. I had a lot to learn about conflict resolution, power dynamics, communication, listening, boundary setting, and leadership. A bull may have the purest of intentions (oh look! he’s shopping for his mother! how sweet), and yet his clumsy and bulky frame is still the primary reason there is shattered china all over the shop’s floor.

Still Gotta Preach, Tho

Anyway, 2019 sucked rocks for me (and many others) in the church, but here is one of the many wonderfully bizarre (aka, ridiculously stressful) things about pastoral work. Every seven days you have to show up and do your thing regardless of life’s circumstances.

So in the spring of 2019, even though our church was on the verge of a split, I still had to write and deliver a sermon practically every Sunday morning.

As I see it, sermons should at the very least be an outflow of the heart and soul of the preacher. We spend hours during the week opening ourselves to what God would want to say through us, then we try and organize that in an interesting/compelling/engaging way so that we can eventually face one of humanity’s biggest fears (public speaking) and deliver what hopefully is a message inspired and sustained by the Spirit.

That’s the hope. The ideal.

But in reality, for many preachers, life and stress and chaos and constraints all conspire together to muck up that process. To interrupt or even corrupt the flow. Now yes, sometimes sermons are aided by the real-life intrusion of events and emotions. But other times a sermon suffers because too much of the preacher’s own crud blocks the flow of the Spirit.

And what I’m getting at is, on Sunday March 24th, 2019, the accumulating crud of navigating the chaos of friends and (chosen) family leaving the church over grievances that—in many ways—I agreed with yet couldn’t do anything about, absolutely impacted my sermon. Not in the good way.

Which helps to explain why I delivered a sermon in which:

• Fear was the primary author,

• My Ego was the leading character,

• I wrapped some otherwise-interesting nuggets of truth into a larger ball of trying to control the narrative,

• I wounded and alienated dear friends of mine, and

• It took me an embarrassingly long number of years to admit all of this.

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In short, I think the question of what it means to BE Christian is far more useful and meaningful than what it means to be A Christian. In other words, being Christian (as a verb, describing the way you live) seems to me to be the whole point, whereas being a Christian (as a noun, describing an identity) feels at best a distraction and at worst an on-going example of how religions get used to divide instead of unite.

More and more when someone accuses another person of not “being a Christian” I rephrase it in my head as them accusing someone of “not being the same kind of Christian that I’ve come to believe is the correct version based on a very narrow view of what I think are the right beliefs, aka, the beliefs which I just so happen to hold.”

Sure it’s clunky, but it’s also true.

Is James Talarico a Christian?

If you’re new to the name James Talarico, here’s a good starting point. He currently serves in the House of Representatives in Texas and is running for Senate this year. He’s also, by my estimation, an incredibly thoughtful, compassionate, kind, respectful, and articulate man who is absolutely animated by his Christian faith.

And yet, I read an article the other day titled, “James Talarico is (Probably) NOT a Christian.” Because I’m familiar with so much of what Talarico stands for, I assumed this headline was irony.

Sadly, it was not.

The author (we shall call him Tim, for that is his name) made an actual effort to claim that James Talarico is not a Christian. To spare you from reading the overly long article, his main two points were:

1. Since Talarico is Pro-Choice, that means he denies the humanity of Jesus. The author used multiple hundreds of words to talk about abortion before finally making his point, that unless a person believes that life begins at conception, then they can’t be a Christian because that would be denying that Jesus was fully human all the time. As he put it, it denies “the Word becoming flesh.” Quite the stretch, but okay.

2. Since Talarico supports same-sex marriage, that means he denies the divinity of Jesus. Talarico says what many of us say (myself included) when he points out that Jesus never spoke against—or for, for that matter—same-sex marriage. Tim takes this undisputed fact and goes on to say that since the Old Testament condemns homosexuality (except that it doesn’t, Tim), and since God describes what is and is not marriage for all times (again, that’s not quite right either… another subject I explore in my next book), then these should be understood as Jesus also saying those things. Tim’s idea is, if anyone suggests “Jesus didn’t say” something that we read about in the Old Testament as coming from God, then that’s tantamount to denying the divinity of Christ. Another stretch, IMO.

Therefore, according to Tim, James Talarico is (probably) not a Christian because he denies both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus.

Which I can promise you isn’t even true, by the way. Talarico would (and does) affirm both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus. So even the main points of the article are incorrect, and absurdly so. All the author did was prove that James Talarico doesn’t share some of the beliefs as he, Tim, does. Big whoop. That’s true about pretty much every human on the face of the earth.

And saying that he is “not a Christian” is disingenuous, because really the claim being made is, “he does not fit my narrowly defined view for what it means to be a Christian based on a specific set of doctrinal positions that I’ve come to believe are the essential tenets of the faith.”

Also big whoop. (I think this is a record for the number of times I’ve used “whoop” in an article). Christianity has been a diverse religion since its inception. To assume there is but one correct way to think about all the theological intricacies of Christianity is merely to reveal you’ve got some gaps in your knowledge about church history.

If our religion is a tool that helps us live more like Jesus, then we’re doing it right. Conversely, if our religion is a tool that helps us measure who’s in and who’s out, well, to quote Jesus, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Oh how far the apple of Christianity has fallen from the tree of what it originally mean to be a Follower of the Way. (Which, need I remind you, were what the first Christians were called: Followers of the Way. Not acquiescers to Doctrinal Statements)

Christianity is More About Behavior Than Beliefs

Most of the hand wringing and online ink-spilling done within Christianity today revolves around beliefs. Doctrine. Theology. Ideas in our brains.

If aliens scoured the vibes across the internet, they’d likely walk away with some formula of: To be a Christian means you believe ____________ and __________, and definitely do NOT believe _________ or __________. Exactly what goes in those blanks are simply a matter of which denomination, tradition, or branch of Christianity you come form.

It’s just… that’s not how Jesus seemed to operate, was it?

As best I can tell, Jesus wanted people to follow him. To be his disciple. To live as he did, to act as he did, to treat people as he did. It’s not that beliefs were unimportant to him, but certainly he didn’t focus on beliefs in the same way that many Christians today do—which is to say, they elevate beliefs as the most important thing. When Jesus did consider beliefs it seems as though what mattered had more to do with their efficacy in producing good fruit, and not their accuracy to some objective truth.

Plus, keep in mind that the idea of “being a Christian” was nonsensical to Jesus because dude was still alive.

Clearly whatever it could’ve meant to be a follower of Jesus, during the actual time of Jesus, could not have rested on, for instance, a theological belief about either the divinity of Christ or the resurrection of Jesus. I’m not saying those positions are unimportant (certainly as it relates to the tradition of Christianity-as-religion they rate near the top), I’m just pointing out that someone could have been an absolutely perfect picture of a “follower of Jesus” during the time of 30-33AD and not held either of those two beliefs in their head.

And that actuality matters to me. A lot.

What Does Being Christian Look Like?

What else matters (or at least, what I think should matter more to many Christians) are the kinds of things that seemed to matter most to Jesus. Making such a list should not be difficult. Off the top of my head, here’s what seemed to matter to Jesus.

• Forgive people (like, every time)

• Show compassion (like, all the time)

• Love others (those who like you, and those who do not)

• Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the poor (if you think there’s a hell, doing these things is how you avoid going there… at least, according to Jesus)

• Call out hypocrisy in leaders (fools at the top of the pyramid shouldn’t get away with being awful humans just because they have lots of power… this goes double if they’re a religious leader)

• Trust in God

• Pray

• Serve people (especially if you’re in a position of authority or leadership)

• Be generous with your resources (hoarding wealth and being stingy really got Jesus' anger-juices flowing)

• Do religious things because they help you and others flourish, not because you’re trying to get right with God

• Be a person of your word

• Don’t respond to violence with violence

• Be free (because you are free)

• Through your actions as well as your words, communicate to others the beautiful and liberating power of living a life characterized by all the above

Doing these kinds of things? That is being Christian.

Based on what I know about James Talarico, I feel safe in assuming that he does his best, just like I do, to embody the above kind of life.

In other words, I think James is obviously Christian in how he lives. Both because he says he is, and because based on the testimony and witness of others, he also walks the walk.

As for what his (or anyone else’s, for that matter) particulars are when it comes to Christian theology? I don’t know. And on some level, I don’t care.

If you are loving God with your whole self, and if you are loving your neighbor as you love yourself, then you’re doing the Main Things Jesus taught.

Which means, you’re following in the way of Jesus.

Which means, you’re Christian.

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This Weekend in Palm Desert

For anyone in the Palm Springs/Desert area, I’m coming your way this weekend!

On Saturday, March 21st I’ll be presenting Not an Oxymoron: Why LGBTQ Affirming Christianity Makes Sense at Hope Lutheran Church. Event starts at 3pm. Register here.

Then on Sunday, March 22nd I’ll be preaching at all three services at Hope Lutheran Church. Get service times and directions here.

I HOPE to see you there! (See what I did there?)

See All 2026 Travel Dates

Jesus’ Thoughts on Worship

Imagine if our worship was less focused on theological accuracy and more grounded in personal honesty?

What if the aim of worship had less to do with the rightness of our religion, and more about the openness of our hearts?

That’s the vibe I get as a follower of Jesus.

In John chapter 4 we read about a conversation between Jesus and a woman from Samaria. They met at a well, she with her a water pot intending to get water, and Jesus with… well, who knows what he was up to. But he’s there, he’s thirsty, and he struck up a conversation with the Samaritan woman.

When their back and forth turned toward the topic of religion, the woman, perceiving Jesus to have insight on the matter, asked about who was worshipping properly: the Samaritans with their mountain, or the Jews with theirs.

In other words: Who is most right?

No wonder. This is the same question people in the church have been asking for 2,000 years.

• Whose worship is the most correct?

• Who has the right theology?

• Who knows what the proper rituals and sacraments are?

• Etc etc etc

Rather than answer her question, Jesus replied by saying God wants people to worship “in spirit and truth.”

Setting aside for a moment what “worship” means (that’s a whole topic unto itself), I’m intrigued by how worshipping-in-spirit and worshipping-in-truth can be an antidote to our human instinct to constantly seek the right, correct, and proper mechanism for worship.

When we ask, “Who has it right,” my sense is that Jesus disagrees with the question altogether. His reframing of the issue matters, and I’ve got some thoughts on that.

But first, since it’s the backdrop of the interaction in this story, I want to say a quick word about religion.

Jesus and Religion

Humanity has a long history of trying to make sense of this strange reality we find ourself in. One of the primary ways we’ve done that is through religion — a tool nearly every civilization has developed to help answer questions of meaning and purpose. Like any tools, we can use them for goodness or for wickedness.

At its best, the tool of religion gets used for healing and flourishing.
Of course we’ve also seen how religion can be used for harm and destruction.

Maybe you have too, but I’ve heard many times over the years that Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion. And usually when people say that it’s because they begin with the belief that religion is inherently bad or broken. Therefore, since religion is bad, then Jesus obviously wasn’t trying to start a new one.

“It’s about a relationship, not a religion,” so says many Christians (and most all evangelicals).

I get why people say this, but I’m not sure I totally agree. I don’t think it was religion Jesus was opposed to, as much as it was the ways that religion can go sour.

As far as I can tell, Jesus’ ultimate goal was to reform the parts of his religion that had lost the plot. Through his teachings and his miracles he tried to reveal an alternative (and I’d add, elevated) way to think about God and what it means to be human.

Saying that Jesus is anti-religion makes as much sense to me as saying Gordon Ramsey is anti-restaurant. The goal is reform and improvement of the best parts, not elimination for elimination’s sake.

When I think about religion as a benign tool of human ingenuity developed to find and make meaning and purpose, and when I think about the ways historically religion has soured and become a tool for destruction, three things come to mind.

1. People have used religion to create divisions, and then become gatekeepers of such divisions.
   
   There are those who use religion to divide by creating arbitrary categories of things like clean/unclean; in/out; pure/impure. Then the religion’s gatekeepers patrol the perimeter and force people to believe certain things or perform specific rituals in order for them to be in the aforementioned groups of “clean, pure, and one-of-us.”
   

2. People have used religion to feed itself at the expense of the people.
   
   We’ve all either been ourselves or known someone who has been on the receiving end of a Religion more invested in self-preservation than in care for human souls. Churches have used shame and fear to keep people in line. A ton of money has been raised, and many buildings have been built, using shame and fear to feed the institutional machine instead of tending to wounded sheep.
   

3. People have resorted to violence in the face of conflict over religious ideas.
   
   The list is embarrassingly long when we start to consider the wars fought between competing religions—or even just the in-fighting within one religion (such as ours, Christianity). How many people throughout the last 2000 years have been on the receiving end of violent efforts for theological purity? How many lives have been ruined and lost over mere differences in ideas?

These are just some of the ways religion can go sour and become a tool for harm instead of healing. And when the Samaritan woman at the well tried to play the religion game, Jesus wasn’t having it.

So now let’s turn to what he said. What might we take from his words that God is seeking those who worship in Spirit and in Truth?

Worship in Spirit

Recall, the Samaritan woman tried to engage Jesus on which mountain was the right mountain for worship. Who drew the lines properly? Who has it right? Where should God be properly worshipped?

Jesus’ response: Worship in Spirit.

How was that a response to her question?

Well, because Spirit cannot be contained. Asking for which location is the correct location to worship God is to live in a world where God is and can be bounded. But Spirit transcends boundaries. Spirit refuses to be owned, protected, sold, or bought.

I’m reminded of when Jesus told his friends “Wherever two or more are gathered, there I am.” Temples are great, synagogues are wonderful, churches are fine… let’s just not confuse the means for the end.

The point is not the mountain—let alone the “right” one. Nor is the point the right beliefs or the correct rituals. These are all external metrics. They’re not bad, per se, but they are most certainly not the point.

When we use religion to create dividers and boundaries, and when we gate-keep who’s in and who’s out, this leaves us endlessly thirsty and unsatisfied.

To worship “in spirit” is to properly align with the location of where worship resides. Meaning, the point is in here (*points to heart).

Trying to arrange all the external bits — theology, sacraments, churches, etc — is like drinking from a well. It’s fine, but it won’t ultimately satisfy. We’ll keep being thirsty. Which is what we’ve done as we’ve endlessly divided over which religion, which denomination, which sect has it right.

Instead, Jesus spoke of Living Water. That stuff comes from within. It’s a source that leads to the life of the ages, to wholeness, to flourishing.

It can satisfy because it’s internal, infinite, and unbound.

It is Spirit.

To which the woman said, “Woah, I want that kind of water. The kind that truly satisfies.”

“Cool,” Jesus replied, “but first, go get your husband.”

“Er… um… I don’t have a husband.”

“You have spoken the truth,” said Jesus. “In fact you’ve had five husbands. And the one you’re with right now isn’t even your husband.”

This now brings us to what it might look like to worship in Truth.

Worship in Truth

I think Christians err when we worship Truth, rather than worship in Truth.

Which is to say, we tend to emphasize theological accuracy while neglecting personal honesty.

I believe that to worship in truth means being honest with ourselves.

If we aren’t honest with ourselves about ourselves then we create a false reality from which we live. This self-deception—which can begin ever so subtly as we ignore even the smallest truths about our motivations, our desires, and our choices—it grows and grows until eventually we become alienated from who we truly are. And when that happens, we’ve now created a hole where our Self should be.

This hole is insufferable and requires filling. Since we’ve created a reality built on lies (about ourselves), we must then turn to external sources, namely other people and God.

We try to fill our lack-of-Self by extracting from others: love me, like me, see me, admire me, respect me. Make me feel good about myself because I’ve cut myself off from myself.

And/or we look to God. Not in the way that 17th century philosopher, Blaise Pascal, meant when he wrote about the infinite abyss in the heart of man that can only be filled by an infinite God—because I think there’s some real truth in that. No I mean we use God, we use religion to mask the ways we lie to ourselves and others.

How many religious leaders have to fail and fall in disastrous manners before we see just how easy it can be to deceive ourselves and others by using the covering of religion, church, God-language, and so on? It’s no wonder Jesus called Pharisees white-washed tombs. They used religion to keep an outer pretense of holiness while inside their hearts were corrupt.

Put plainly, we can’t worship in truth if we are not honest with ourselves. When we are not honest with ourselves then our worship becomes at best pretend and at worst an illusion we project in order to keep the lies covered.

Worshipping in truth, then, means aligning ourselves with what is Real, with what is True.

We get honest about who we are.

We tell the truth.

And that’s what the Samaritan woman did. “I don’t have a husband.”

When Jesus said what he did (you’re right, you’ve had five, and the one you’re with now isn’t a legitimate relationship), it’s like he said the things out loud that, probably for this woman, were the source of her greatest shame. Those were the things she tried to keep hidden from everyone, including even to her own Self. But by admitting she didn’t currently have a husband she took a small (yet massive!) step to shatter the illusion she had created, an illusion that no doubt kept her disconnected from what is Real and True.

In that moment of confession, of honesty, she was in Truth. And it was liberating.

In fact, when she went to her village to tell people about Jesus she said, “Come see this man who’s told me everything I’ve ever done.”

In other words, I met someone who confronted me with absolute Truth and I lived to tell the tale!

What We Find When We Worship in Spirit and Truth

I was a Worship Pastor for ten years. Every day, each week, I had worship on the brain. It’s a layered, complex, nuanced, endlessly fascinating subject, of which I feel like I understand less now than when it was my full-time job.

And yet, for all my study, all my engaging with, all my leading of worship, I think I fundamentally misunderstood these two aspects of what Jesus said matters to God when it comes to our worship.

To worship in Spirit is to stop playing the games of external boundary making and trying to divide up humanity into in/out groups, right/wrong, us/them. Instead we trust in the Transcendent nature of God’s Spirit. We accept that Spirit is free and available to all, and that it flows from within infinitely and without restrictions.

To worship in Truth is be honest. To tell the truth about ourselves, to stand in a place of integrity and openness. It is to stop trying to cover our shame, hide our doubts, or mask our fears with the trappings of religion.

And when we do this, when we show up with an intent for worship that comes from within (the heart), and is as open and honest as we know how to be, we will discover the same thing the Samaritan woman encountered: a life changing, non-judgmental, compassionate, and loving presence.

We discover God.

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No? That’s just me? (cue Ho…

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The first verse of the cherished hymn, Amazing Grace, ends with this proclamation:

I once was lost, but now I'm found;

‘Twas blind, but now I see

By pulling in the metaphor…

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Not Picking Sides

Except for extreme cases, most friends of couples who are divorcing begin the process by “not wanting to pick sides.” You’re familiar with this, yes?

While such an intent has a beautiful heart behind it, this posture often gets abandoned as time goes on. And look, no judgment here. This stuff is complicated and messy. Adult friendships all by themselves and even under the best circumstances can be challenging. Add on top of that the distress caused when one of the couples in the friend group separates? Woof.

This can especially be true when one or both people in the divorce fall prey to the temptation to juice up their subjective narrative of “why the divorce happened.” Which makes sense. The sympathy of others feels good—I know this first hand. In the ensuing months after our separation, during my deepest grief, it felt good to have people rally to my side; to have friends reinforce my narratives; to have people tell my how it’s probably better for me that I’m not with the other person any more anyways. This kind of full-throated support can act as salving balms to a bleeding heart.

So I get it. It’s human to bend the truth a bit, or omit certain details when we are hurting because it might generate the kind of sympathy that brings temporary relief from the grief.

But one of the many side effects of juicing our side of the story like that is how it inevitably impacts the friends and family doing their best to “not pick a side.”

So today I want to explore the phenomenon of losing friends from a divorce. Specifically my own experience of it. Though I knew such friend-loss is a thing that happens, I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel—even now, 3.5 years later—when it happened to me.

Dividing (Relational) Assets Post Divorce

If a divorced couple is able to quickly pivot from “married” to “good friends,” then everyone in their social orbit (as well as family!) exhales with great relief that they won’t have to take sides.

But such a thing doesn’t happen very often. It is the exception that proves the rule.

Even in cases where a couple might start out with intentions of navigating post-marriage life well, often times the unfolding of the divorce process jostles those intentions enough to cause disruptions in the fabric of the friend group.

So let’s just call it like is: in most divorces there’s not only a division of financial and material assets, there’s also a division of relational assets.

The Pain of Losing Friends in a Divorce

As the title of this post says, even though I knew this would (very very very likely) be the case with me and my ex, it still hurt(s) real bad.

There are a handful of people who were our closest friends that I might not realistically ever see or talk to again. And even if we do cross paths, clearly the friendship has been severed.

Grieving the loss of friendships at the same time as grieving the loss of a spouse, while also grieving the loss of being full-time parent, is truly (pardon the gendered language, but I am me) a nut-punch of epic proportions.

Here are a few ways it hurt and still hurts:

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NEW STUDY SHOWS INCREASE IN ANTI-GAY BIAS

When it comes to attitudes and tolerance toward gays and lesbians, from about 2000-2020 America experienced an historically rapid pace of moving from an unfav…

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“Alright, I’ll see you there,” I holler at Tim as he clo…

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I know, you barely even remember me at this point!

(But for those who do, and have kept their paid subscription, there’s a free THANK YOU gift for you down below :)

This newsletter has been pretty silent as of late, but there’s a good reason.

I’m in my final stretch of finishing the first draft of my next book.

How fun is THAT?!

This next book will be a follow up to UnClobber.

Here’s what I mean.

As I’ve been doing this work for the past 10+ years I’ve seen firsthand the power when people can rightly understand the clobber passages. And for many folks, that’s all they needed on their way to full LGBTQ inclusion.

Oh, we were wrong about Sodom and Gomorrah?

Oh, Leviticus doesn’t condemn homosexuality?

Oh, Romans isn’t a universal judgement of gay people?

Oh, Corinthians doesn’t exclude LGBTQ people from being Christian?

Right on! LFG.

When that happens, amazing. I’m here for it. It was, after all, the path I took to inclusion.

However… what I’ve learned is that other people have follow up questions.

Good and reasonable follow up questions. Such as…

• But what about Adam and Eve?

• But what about Biblical marriage?

• But what about Gender, and God making male-and-female?

• But what about those ex-gay stories I sometimes hear about?

These are the kinds of questions that flood my inbox and show up at my events.

And these are the topics I’m addressing in this next book.

But wait there’s more…

because in addition to addressing the FAQ’s from the not-yet affirming crowd, I’m going to offer my own “But what abouts….”

• But what about the trajectory of inclusion seen in the story of the church?

• But what about the Divine preference for Diversity we see in the Bible?

• But what about the reality that beliefs are not the point?

• But what about the breadcrumbs of inclusion sprinkled throughout Scripture?

This book (tentatively titled, But What About) has been my hardest book to write so far. It’s taken me far longer than I anticipated. In fact, it was originally due on October 1st, and I had to ask for (and graciously received) an extension from my editor.

The last couple months if anything is on my calendar that is NOT “Write Book,” I cancel or reschedule it.

The only TV I’m watching at night is basically sports and reality TV, because I don’t want any other narratives in here (points to head). This is also why I stopped listening to podcasts in the morning when I shower, get ready, and make coffee.

Stay. Focused.

So yeah, that’s why I haven’t had the capacity to write for Perspective Shift. I should be back here more regularly come January.

Thanks for understanding!

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In the Meantime

In lieu of some written content, may I tempt you with the last couple sermons I’ve preached at Denver Community Church? Where I joined the Teaching Team earlier this year?

A Thank You Gift

I know that quite a few of you dropped your paid subscription these past couple months (about 10%… oooof), and I get it. The affordability crisis is real, and you probably couldn’t justify paying for a subscription for something that wasn’t regularly providing you with value.

For those that are still with me, either because you support me and this work regardless of the frequency, or because you just haven’t remembered to cancel yet, thank you!

As a thank you I’d like to give you an exclusive peek at the first draft of the Introduction. I think it perfectly captures where this book plans to go.

Introduction to “But What About”

Imagine a world where your devotion to Jesus and your love for Scripture do not block affirmation, but instead they make LGBTQ inclusion inevitable.

Look, I get it, I used to skip Introductions, too. I don’t need you to tell me what you’re going to tell me, just tell me. Quit clearing your throat and get to it already. Cut the fluff, deliver the goods (which is likely what my editor will say about this entire opening bit, we shall see). But then I went to Europe with my friend Larry, had dinner below the cobblestone streets of France where the walls were lined with barrels of Bordeaux, and learned something that forever altered my posture toward Introductions.

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Today I want to pick up where …

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Question for you: Is there a proper/improper way to feel when someone dies?

Generally speaking I’m of the opinion that we should be reaaaalllly slow to judge

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One response I totally understood, and kind of agreed with.

The other response I kind of understood, an…

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Upstanding citizens kept getting hot and bothered that Jesus routinely kept company with—how to put this—the undesirables of his time.

In order to try…

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Not only do I love the title, Better Ways to Read the Bible, but I love what the title is saying.

Because yes, we do in…

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This phase of ministry, though markedly different from my prev…

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As mentioned yesterday, I don’t think I’ve always been that great at friendship.

My propensity to be selfish,

my focus on achieving and being the best,

my fear of being vul…

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I’m going to say something about myself here in a second that runs the risk of being thirsty for affirmation. Just know, up front, that’s very much not my intent.

In fact, there’s a not-always-obvious…

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