Pastor Craig's ConSpiritu Blog

In my previous post, I wrote about culture happening in the overlap and intersections between four main arenas:  natural/environmental,  spiritual/value-oriented,  social/organizational,  and aesthetic/expressive.  In this post, I want to begin with a look at the natural/environmental arena, or the Earth, to put it simply. I put it this way because the earth is foundational to our existence. We are creatures of the earth, along with every other living and non-living thing. There is no escaping this basic fact. Whatever happens to the earth happens to us.  Perhaps the greatest crisis facing the whole of humankind is environmental.  Ever since the publishing of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring , in the early 1960’s, public attention across the world has been drawn to the dangers of pesticides, pollution, hazardous and nuclear waste, the degradation of ecosystems and the accelerated rate of species extinction.   The scientific community is virtually unanimous in decl

In my previous blog, I talked about "creating culture." That probably sounds a bit strange to most people. After all, one might say, isn't culture simply a given? Something that simply happens? How does one "create culture?" Good question. Perhaps it might be helpful to first look at the word "culture" itself. The English word is derived from the French culture , which in turn is derived from the Latin cultura , which is the past participial form of colere , which referred to the practice of tilling the soil. The American Heritage Dictionary traces the etymology to the (putative) Indo-European root kwel- and the related form kwel-, which means "to revolve, move around, sojourn, dwell."  A cluster of words derived from this root that include colony, cult, wheel, cyclone, cycle, pulley, cultivate, culture and bucolic. From this, it is interesting to notice the close association between tilling the ground, dwelling or sojourning, and c

I grew up (literally) in a mid-sized Methodist (later United Methodist) Church in Boise, Idaho . My parents started attending this church in 1958. We attended Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Jr. High MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) and Sr. High MYF (which in 1968 became UMYF, and then just UMY (I'll let you guess the acronym). I was UMY President at one point, attended church camps, and even served on our Conference Senior Youth Ministries Council (SYMCO). We attended worship every Sunday, unless deathly ill.  That was the era in which people walked out to a street corner, proclaimed, "I'm starting a church on this corner," and the next Sunday fifty people would show up to help it happen. Somewhere around the later years of high school, I began to wrestle with the idea of going into ministry. This wrestling continued through college, and finally after graduating from Willamette University , I went off to seminary to pursue ministry training. By the time I s

A year ago, I went on a personal renewal retreat up at Camp Magruder for a week. At Magruder, there is a labyrinth marked out in a sandy field towards the beach from the cabins. I decided to start my mornings after breakfast with a slow meditative walk through the labyrinth. As I walked the labyrinth, I would pull a weed here and there, replace stones that once marked the sides of the path, clear out sticks that blacked the path. I tended that path. As I sat in quiet reflection and meditation in the center of the labyrinth, I was flooded with the realization that we have been given a Path by Jesus to tend. It is a lifelong path of growth and discovery, of risk and adventure, of deep mystery and boundless joy. And I believe that Jesus wants us to get back on this Path. All around us, society is changing. Attendance patterns in churches are changing. Article after article attempts to parse various generational behaviors regarding faith expression and group involvement. Core-level val

One of the churches I serve, Coburg United Methodist Church, is richly blessed to have as part of our fellowship, two recently retired missionaries from Bethlehem, Palestine, Alex and Brenda Awad. Alex was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel, and he and Brenda served for many years as missionaries in a school that Alex's brother founded in Bethlehem, Bethlehem Bible College, one of few Christian colleges in the Holy Land. Alex and Brenda have a fascinating, and at time heart-wrenching story to tell about the situation of Palestinians, Arabs, and Christians in this land we call "Holy," but whose actions so often seem not to be so. Alex shared with me an article he wrote reflecting upon the decision of President Trump to unilaterally declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel. I share it with you so that you can start to understand the broader implications of the president's actions.  Alex Awad: "Assessing the Damage..." When I reflect upon the the very