Unpacking Ideas

Wild Christians make me uncomfortable.   You might be wondering, “Who are wild Christians?”  They are the different ones.  They expect more from me.  Too much sometimes.  They expect more from the Church.  They do things I would be uncomfortable doing.  They push us by their example to be better, to be more.  I think they want the rest of us to [...]

[What's up with Jack Bogut?  I wrote this article almost a yearago and it still generates a ton of interest.  Go Jack!  Send me an e-mail to tell me what you liked most about Bogut In The Morning:  jeff@unpackingideas.org] Every morning I heard Jack Bogut’s voice.   Before school while Mom cooked Dad’s oatmeal, the radio would be tuned to KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh [...]

Back to the middle, in church (I don’t mean where you sit in the pew on Sundays!).  The murky middle.  I recently attended our church denomination’s annual conference (Sorry, this is not the most exciting lead-in to an article!  It’ll get more interesting later, honest.)  As with many denominations, ours is experiencing a slight membership decline among our U.S. [...]

In the popular 1989 film Dead Poets Society, the lead character John Keating (played by Robin Williams) expresses fondness for Henry David Thoreau’s life perspective:1  I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and [...]