David Williams
Faith, brand, and identity
What is it that defines us, as beings? What gives cohesion to our sense of ourselves, and then establishes our relationship to others?
These questions were bopping around in my head the other day as I was walking the dog.
When terrible theology makes good Christians
It was the strangest thing.
I was heaving my way through a book by Creflo A. Dollar, one of the most potent purveyors of prosperity preaching in the United States.
Laying down your soul
"No greater love than this," Jesus intones, and then he talks about laying down his life for his friends.
...The tomb of the emergent Christian
I'm a sentinel of sorts, now, standing vigil over one of the last markers of a movement that flickered and died.After a brief conversation, Presbymergent shut down its Facebook presence many moons ago.
Christian business and religious freedom
The ongoing uproar over legislative actions in Indiana and Arkansas over the rights of businesses to serve or not serve customers based on religious preferences will echo in our ears for a while longer.
The question, of course, is Why?
Lessons for a small world
It was a reflection that came to me, as things often do, as I was walking.
I was musing on the seeming insanity of my devoting so much time to studying small faith communities, on what possible relevance that might have to the great wild churn of faith.
Tribes and tribal gods
It's peculiar, of late, the degree to which the idea of tribalism has been surfacing in the world....
The jobs young people don't want
Full-time employment, as we well know now in our duct-tape kludged economy, ain't an easy thing to come by. It's particularly, brutishly so for 20 and 30-somethings, who often cobble together their lives with part-time employment here and there.
Which is why an article in The Washington Post struck me.
Piloting a tiny church
How do you serve and support a healthy small faith community?
That's one of the core questions of my doctoral research, and I've been wrestling with it as I've pored through dozens and dozens of books dealing with every form of small church life.
The one who writes with fire
It came in a moment of reflection. It was a brief meditation over a concept, or rather, a meditation over the interplay between two ways of conceptualizing the divine.
...
The fire next time
I and a small group of intrepid members of my congregation have been heaving our way through the book of Revelation for the last half-dozen weeks, and it ain't easy going....
Loss, death, and paths not taken
It was a rough time recently for the area of the church I serve, as the news of a young man's suicide hit the town hard....
Look at how we kill you
Sunday morning, as I was doing the final edit on my sermon, I flitted briefly to web-based news sources to check in on the world....
A canopy of grace
As the Poolesville Community Garden winds down its first year of operation, it's been great seeing the church and our partnership with local businesses, Poolesville Green, and the town of Poolesville, Maryland, thrive. It's exciting, and a blessing, because gardens are a wonderful, amazing way to be fed.
Returning to the void
One of the unanticipated pleasures of my recent trip to the middle of the Pacific Ocean was the complete absence of the Internet.
Oh, the scenery was stunning, and the wildlife—particularly under the surface of the water—was an amazing riot of living beings. The food was delicious and very slightly overabundant.
The church that doesn't need you
It was quite the week at my little congregation. One recent Monday morning, a multigenerational group of teens, young adults, and adults took off in two rental vans, headed for a youth service mission trip to West Virginia, something that's been a regular staple of the life of the church for years.
In preparation for this trip, I spent the last few months in a flurry of doing . . . nothing.
Unaccompanied children
The crisis du jour, outside of the eternal mess of the Middle East, is the arrival of thousands upon thousands of children on the doorstep of the United States.
With bleak economic conditions and violence in their streets, central American families are giving their children up, sending them off to be abandoned at the border of the United States.
Israel, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and "divestment"
Divestment? From Israel? That's the rumbling issue that's raising eyebrows, as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) holds our biannual meeting di tutti meetings.
For all the kerfuffle, I don't know that what the Presbyterian Church is considering can even be meaningfully described as "divestment." Sure, there are folks out there advocating for that approach, but that's not what's being done.
The terrible horrible no good very bad sermon
It wasn't a particularly rushed morning, several Sundays ago.
I'd finished up the sermon, then putzed around with it for a few minutes as I always do before printing it up on a Sunday morning.