Because I speak often in this spot of the dangers of the inerrantist approach to scriptures, I am sometimes misunderstood.

I believe in a personal God. I believe Jesus was raised from the dead. I believe he appeared to the disciples and continues to appear to people today.

I not only believe these things, I believe they are provable to most thinking people who are open to the evidence.

(How many of you have I lost so far? If you are still with me, I may lose you on this one.) I believe in a communicating God.

I believe in a God who is accessible–a God we can know through experience.

For years I have worked on a book examining over 100 direct encounters with Divine Reality—or, in other words—with God.

Six of those accounts in the book are from me.

But I haven’t always known what to do with them.

In Discovering God, (still to be published), my accounts are in the contest of similar stories.

Outside the book, even in sermons, my encounters with the Divine can seem—shocking.

And unbelievable.

So, am I meant to share these events? Or were they just for me—to inform my ministry?

I am coming to believe (at my tender age) I should share these stories more freely. 

I will share an account in my sermon this Sunday.

I once asked God about human suffering.

And God answered.

+ + +
Saturday (tomorrow)
At 6:00 p.m. 
Choirmaster Blake Glass, and Soloist Shannon Davison, present:
A Night on Broadway 
Supper after—all free
(Offering taken.)
Come—for the joy of it.

Back in the pulpit this Sunday after a two-weeks absence due to illness.

Remember the classic novelty song from the late 50s: Yakety Yak?

Take out the papers
and the trash—
Yakety yak, yakety yak.

Ah, they don’t write them like that anymore.

But that’s what we will be doing in a series of sermons over the next few weeks: taking out the trash.

Trash theology, that is.

In visiting old churches in England, I noticed the ground beneath the east window often rises up on the church. That’s because so many people wanted to be buried there—close to the altar inside the church.

If you had money (like Mr. Shakespeare) you could be buried in front of the altar inside.

It was believed that those closest to the altar would be the first to rise on Resurrection Day.

Silly—including the idea of a Resurrection Day.

It’s trash theology.

We are “raised” the moment we die. Life continues uninterrupted.

In a spiritual world, we will have no use for those bones in the ground.

(Or that powder after a cremation.)

Paul said, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And every NDE tells us the soul, the true self, our consciousness, lives on.

Yet, surprisingly, many people still believe that, at death, we enter some “great sleep,” to be awakened at the “General Resurrection.”

Even the theologian John Pokingham says, “God will remember us back into existence.” Great minds can come up with dumb ideas–and bad theology.

This Sunday we will take more bad theology out with the trash.

Join us at 11:00.

In-person, if you can.