It was a great question. “What do you think of Emmaus in the story?” This was Jarrod McKenna, asking the question of me on the InVerse podcast he hosts with Drew Hart. We were doing some creative reflection on Luke’s ..read more

“God is on the throne.” The saying gets pulled out any time something happens that isn’t to our liking. A roadblock in a relationship. A cancer diagnosis. An unwanted election result. “Don’t worry. God is still on the throne.” It’s ..read more

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Donald Trump. In numerous social media posts, I’ve tried to tell it like it is with Trump. I’ve called out his misogyny and racism and pathological lying from the beginning. I’ve ..read more

How did Jesus read his Bible, and what does that mean for how we should read ours? That’s the basic question behind The Word Fulfilled: Reading the Bible with Jesus, my latest book and my first in thirteen years. It ..read more

We’re hearing more about “Jesus-centred Christianity.” At least, I am. And I’m realizing that there are some very different understandings out there of what this means. How do I understand this? And what difference does this make? It needs to ..read more

Growing up evangelical, I was taught that human fetuses (even embryos) are full human persons, and therefore abortion is the same as killing any other human: in rare cases justified, but most often murder. When this is your frame of ..read more

John’s Gospel opens with one of the most beautiful and spectacular theological reflections in all of Scripture. Here are the well-known first few verses: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was ..read more

I get this question a lot. I am fully affirming of LGBTQ+ people and support equal marriage. That’s no secret. I made a video describing my “conversion” on this (it’s soooo 2020 , but still gets at the essence of my thinking on this), and this video has made the rounds in Mennonite Church circles. (I’ve learned not to be surprised when I’m in another province and someone comes up to me and says, “Thank you for that video…”) However, in my role as executive minister of a regional church denomination, most of the congregations I serve are not affirming, and many of those may never become affirmi ..read more

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Jack, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried…” Okay, my story is more complicated than Jesus’ tale of The Rich Man and Lazarus. For one thing, in my story, a story that actually happened, the rich man has a name. His name was Phil. And, while Phil w ..read more

Recently I posted the following on social media: I’m a Christian, a follower of Jesus. Of course I believe in hell. But do I believe in a post-mortem lake of fire where people are tortured eternally for not believing the right things? Absolutely not. That’s utterly unchristian and foreign to the way of Jesus. But I was being tricksy. I was intentionally trying to get a reaction from both the “fundamentalists” and the “progressives.” Christian fundamentalists, of course, believe exactly what I deny in the second part, and they think this belief is the historically orthodox, biblical, properly C ..read more