The chapter below is a part of a series I have been/am still working on in which I retell the Bible stories I loved in Sunday School and explore their applications to my adult life as well as to today’s fractured church and society. I find the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho […]
Read more "Joshua: An Enduring Culture of Violence"Cadbury Eggs are one of the great wonders of the modern world. They’re precious like gold or baby otters. When I was a kid, the Creme Eggs were delicacies that only showed up once a year in the baskets our Easter Bunny/mom set out for us at the breakfast table before church. Sure, there was […]
Read more "The Day After Easter"When I was 19 years old, I floated down the middle of Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday. Ten months earlier, I wasn’t succeeding in class, wasn’t succeeding outside of class, felt disoriented in regards to my future and needed a structured incubator where I could find the pieces of myself that seemed scattered and in […]
Read more "Ministry at Mardi Gras"Reginald came into my life when I was in high school. His arms flailed around when he danced, he didn’t watch what he said for fear he’d say the wrong things, and if anyone made fun of his voice, a voice that could only be described as Kermit-esque, it never fazed him. I’m fairly certain […]
Read more "Reginald & Me"No one wants to go back to middle school. Not a single person, with the possible exception of Billy Gilman, wants to revisit that period of our lives. Nothing went right, everything was unfair and we feel trapped inside our moody, horny, sprouty selves. We kick off adolescence excited we’re no longer in elementary school […]
Read more "What’s in a Name?"Each summer, our youth group joined other churches from our Super-Christian North Texas district for a week of camp that took place at a Pentecostally-sanctioned camp ground. It was a week of field-day games, non-coed swimming, sexually-repressed flirting with other sexually-repressed teenagers and no less than two hellfire and brimstone services each day. None of […]
Read more "Summer Camp"My youth group’s fine arts program was a robust organization. I’d been a part from its inception, proudly standing in the second row of the choir loft singing a song called “Sounds of Heaven,” a staple on Christian radio around that time. I felt grown and mature singing with the other teenagers, no longer a […]
Read more "The Tiny Foxes"