Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson sit down for a chat.  What could go wrong?

Not being a Tucker or an Elon fan, I missed the interview, but have read about it since.  The news stories have focused on an exchange between the two having to do with artificial intelligence (AI) and its dangers. At one point Musk said among the dangers of AI is that it might become a “digital god.”  Here’s the excerpt from the show’s transcript where the Tesla billionaire makes the comment: Continue reading →

I will not be alone in preaching the story of Doubting Thomas this coming Sunday.  The episode from John 20 is the Gospel text for the day in the Common Lectionary, and it is the “one week later” narrative often used the Sunday after Easter.  Thomas will be preached from many pulpits this Sunday.

You remember the story.  Thomas misses the Easter evening gathering of the disciples when the risen Jesus appears to them. Thomas shows up later, and the other disciples tell him they have seen the Lord. But Thomas says to his friends, “unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Jesus returns in a week and offers just the proof Thomas has requested. The best translation for what Jesus tells Thomas is something like, “Do not continue in your unbelief, but believe” (New English Translation).  The New International Version, like others, however, reads, “Stop doubting and believe.” The “doubting” translations miss John’s play on belief and unbelief, but hence the nickname. Continue reading →

Today is April 7, Good Friday, and by providence or ecclesiastical calculations it is a double anniversary for me.  On April 7, 2003, I received a cancer diagnosis, and on Good Friday, 2003, I underwent surgery for that cancer. Twenty years. The cancer was serious, so serious that the doctor would not allow me to leave the office until I had scheduled surgery. The first available date was 11 days later on April 18, Good Friday. They said they could just as well schedule me for the following Monday, but I said I thought Good Friday would be a good day for surgery.

The surgery went well and was followed by chemotherapy. Twenty years later, I am a long-term cancer survivor.

This week I have been thinking about twenty years ago – I rarely think about that April of 2003 any longer, so having it come to mind twenty years later may be a good thing, for it was a time of grace. Continue reading →

As one of my presbytery duties, I have been in contact with the leaders of a church whose pastor has just accepted a call to a new congregation.  The pastor is happy with a call that will put him closer to his aging parents, and his now former congregation is thankful for the leadership he provided during his time with them.  All is well. Except that the congregation must now find a new pastor, and these are not easy times for the finding of a new pastor.

As I prepared to talk with the leaders, I did some background work since I know nothing of the church or the town where it is located.  I checked our presbytery’s data on the church, visited its website, and, for some insight into the community, went to city-data.com.  City-Data offers a wealth of information on just about every city, town, and village in America. You can discover everything you could possibly want to know about population trends, the economy, housing, education, healthcare, weather, crime, earthquakes, and tornadoes. Continue reading →

I am serving on a presbytery committee, in fact chairing it, and it is made up of some of the most enjoyable committee members I have ever worked with in my long history of working with committees.  I love it.  We are called the Church Health Committee, and we are going to fail at our mission.

The mission we have accepted is defined by the denomination as working to ensure “that every one of (our) congregations will be an outpost of the Kingdom, with every member viewing himself or herself as a missionary on a mission.”  We are going to fail.

Sometime in the last couple of decades, we began to write organizational goals in terms of outcomes and outcomes in terms of universals.  The language of universal outcomes may be most commonly seen in the various initiatives of the education establishment – outcome based education – and its most recent iteration, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.  The Department of Education says the goal of ESSA is ““to increase equity, improve the quality of instruction, and increase outcomes for all students.” Except that it won’t.  ESSA is a failure. More on that in a minute. Continue reading →