Category Archives: Thoughts

Here is my daughter, Avery (10), crushing Latin homework on a Thursday morning and enjoying the “Pink Drink” from Starbucks. On a visit to Starbucks, Avery usually gets one of three drinks, the Pink Drink being one of them. From the backseat of the car, Avery exclaimed, “This is the best Pink Drink I’ve had!”Continue reading “Share The Best Stuff”

Yesterday, Ginger took our kids to a bargain store for some shopping and my oldest, Avery (daughter, 10) came home with a Beastie Boys shirt. And all of heaven and earth rejoiced! And all of God’s people said, “Mmm drop!” This morning, we were polishing off the typical Saturday morning donuts and listening to someContinue reading “Beastie Boys and Discipleship”

Preachers in our contemporary moment have used the rotating chairs on The Voice to convey the essence of the grace of God. The basic gist is this: We are the singer on the stage; God is in the chair. We are trying to earn God’s love like the contestants are trying to sing well enoughContinue reading “The Thing about those chairs from The Voice”

I had a conversation in my freshman year of undergraduate school that changed my life. I was one year removed from my youth-group-all-star days, full of passion and zeal, and spending more time praying and listening to Passion worship CDs than studying theology. I was fortunate to live near some patient (and smart) friends whoContinue reading “JC + Nothing = Everything”

We’ve been watching a lot of football around the Skillen home and we’ve loved a few of the advertising campaigns that we’ve seen in the commercial breaks. Our favorite: The Settler’s. I think that these are not only funny ads, but they remind me of who we can be as the Church, at times. We tendContinue reading “Settlers: TV Ad and the Church”

I’ve been doing some work for a sermon for next Sunday that will reflect on the story of Jesus and his parents meeting Simeon in the temple courts of Jerusalem just 8 days after Jesus’ birth. (see Luke 2:22-40) Jesus’ parents were fulfilling their purification obligations as good Jewish parents when they were interrupted byContinue reading “The Mirror in the Other”

This isn’t a post about marriage but about a time when Jesus was asked a question about marriage, that placed him between a rock and a hard place. (see Matthew 19:1-10) To be more clear, this post is about a time when Jesus was asked a question about marriage and decided to deal with the thing behindContinue reading “Between Rocks and Hard Places and Safety and Refugees”

I’m preparing a talk for the weekend and wanted to post a bit about it. It will be some new material, so writing a bit about it helps to sort it out, a bit. In Mark 5, Jesus and his friends are in a neighboring region called the Decapolis, the land of Tyre and Sidon,Continue reading “The Stiff-Arm of God”

Yeah, I guess I’ll go there, mainly because we’ve all heard about it. If you have not, here’s a post that has links to a representative from Starbucks and the link to Joshua Feuerstein’s original video. There are some conspiracy theories out there, trying to make light of it. Along the way, it seems likeContinue reading “The Thing About this Red Cup”