Inappropriate Conversations

Even from an Advent Calendar perspective, I prefer music to chocolate. This includes Christmas music, both reverent and irreverent, along with songs that would be more accurately described as "winter holiday" than Christmas music. Different Drummer: George Frideric Handel

Happy Thanksgiving week! As an Advent Booklet of sorts, the content for this episode really applies to next Sunday. Advent begins on November 30th this year. You can listen all at once or take the content one week at a time between now and Christmas. Different Drummer: John Fahey

Whether the church has a vital role to play in national elections?

The best thing about suspense films, whether thrillers or horror, is the build up not the payoff. Getting the the edge of your seat doesn't happen at the moment of shock or surprise, it happens on the way there. Les Diaboliques is one of my favorite examples. It's a movie that might be described as the one that got away from Hitchcock. Different Drummer: Alfred Hitchcock Spoiler scene from the 195...

Time to respond to feedback, formally, for the fourth time. The P's and Q's are your points and questions. Thanks! Different Drummer: Michael J. Fox

Whether travel, health, rain and other hopes should be the primary focus of prayer?

Scriptures, in order of appearance: Acts 17: 10-12 Hebrews 5:7 – 6:3 1 Corinthians 2:11 – 3:11 Romans 12: 1-6 Psalms 19:14 Matthew 5: 13-24 John 19: 28-30 Galatians 3: 6-18 Galatians 3: 23-29 James 2: 8-13 Romans 13: 8-10 Galatians 5: 1-15 Matthew 25: 31-46 John 8: 1-11 Luke 10: 25-37 John 4: 1-30 John 14: 1-10 Luke 14: 1-24 Matthew 18:21 – 19:12 Isaiah 56: 1-8 Luke 6:43 – 7:10 Matthew 8: 5-13 Joh...

Whether faith can abide superstition and where to draw a line between the two?

This Sunday is National Grandparents' Day, which has been a secular holiday since 1978, or so I'm told. The day doesn't receive anywhere near the respect, or marketing, of days for mothers and fathers. I suspect a large number of grandparents could argue that insufficient respect is par for the course. What does it mean, though, to "respect your elders" as I've been told many times in my life? I b...

If I had been younger when record companies began putting warning labels on albums and tapes, responding to pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center and others, I'm sure I would have responded like almost every teenager I observed while working in a record store. The "Tipper sticker" served as a beacon, telling them which albums to buy. Only very rarely did I observe this attempt at censors...

Whether the Sunday School calendar should follow the school year, including a dormant period for summer months?

Friends have recently called to my attention that I've insufficiently emphasized the most important of my human relationships. It is true. One reason is trying to keep some private things private. Another is that I forget how a passionate lifelong romantic partnership is, perhaps, strange. I'd never want to take anything for granted though. Note: I could have gone without the explicit language tag...

Whether the concept of "home church" is necessary or merely particularism? Also: Some thoughts on 1 John 4: 7-21 Greetings From Nowhere 1 Greetings From Nowhere 2 Take Him With You 1 Take Him With You 2

A century ago in sermons and speeches that would become My Utmost For His Highest, the current sad state of Christianity was described aptly with the question, "Are you loyal to Jesus or to your notion of him?" by Oswald Chambers. We see the problem when Christians openly dispute the things Jesus said, or when popular versions of Bible stories don't match the "inspired word of God" and those obses...

Whether maintaining a hierarchy of sins is itself un-Biblical and sinful?

Business author Jason Jennings once raised the question: what's the good business reason for doing this? It's a notion we should apply to other aspects of life. The church should mix this with "what would Jesus do?" slogans and challenge whether congregations have asked about the good Jesus reasons before taking a stand. Likewise, in the area of state secrets, our government leaders need to ask th...

Whether equipping virtually can effectively lead to an actual outreach?

The birth of a pseudonym tends to be all about necessity, but the death of a pen name is rarely chronicled. I've been speaking, here and there, about The Author since the second Inappropriate Conversations podcast. Here is the rest of that story, in a surrealistic way. Different Drummer: M. C. Escher

Whether membership must focus on a single church, as if fidelity is more to a congregation than to Christ?

Imagine that everything you ever have done and everything you ever will do has either already happened in a single flash of "time" or is happening now. Everything. We are only aware of an echo, a flow from that moment of reality, and it appears to proceed horizontally to us. What if the bigger picture functions vertically, though, and instantaneously? Our perspective on several theological concept...

A long trip and a long interval between podcasts may call for a long episode. This nostalgia show covers my recent journey through England, Scotland, and Wales. Please, mind the gap while you are listening to this show. Our next stop will be the verticality of time. Thanks for listening! Different Drummer: John Peel

Whether the concept of tithing applies to the giver or to the church as the receiver?

Whether the notion of "things we don't discuss in church" is strangling our ministry?

Rather than noting what is in this World Storytelling Day episode, I'll note what is regrettably missing. * Not much personal storytelling, despite a commitment to return to nostalgia a few weeks ago. * Repeating some material from Inappropriate Conversations #50 about Lilo & Stitch. * Insufficient callout to the band The Peddlers for the theme song to The Lost Continent. * Planned but forgot to c...

Whether condemnation of a denomination based on its lack of prejudice is really more of an endorsement?