Best of

Dunnottar Castle, Scotland

These links represent six years blogging under that title (explained here). During that time I have been a pastor and a seminary student in Western Canada and a PhD student in Scotland. In that time, too, my wife and I saw our family of four grow to six with the addition of twin boys. This blog more often than not served as a processing station and connection point with friends old and new scattered across the globe. I'm sure those whose comments are inscribed along with my posts will join me in offering the caveat that these were thoughts-in-progress, and so do not necessarily represent firmly held life-long positions. That said, I think that generally speaking the following links do represent the highlights...

2012

• The Table - a short poem on the Lord's Supper
• The Giver is Given Up: Jesus' Death in Matthew
• "The Bible is an important part of..." - on usurping the authority of Scripture
• On gender roles in the church, blogging at Out of Bounds:
• Who are the Daughters of Zelophehad Today?
• Tinker, Tailor, Complementarian, Egalitarian: Looking at our Labels Again
• Why IS the Gospel Coalition Complementarian? Questioning Carson, Keller and Piper
• Karl Barth on Gender Roles in the Church
• A History of Gender Roles in Canada's C&MA - merging Alex Meek's thesis and recent developments
• Robert's Rules of Order: Meet Political Worship- from Out of Bounds

2011

• Don't be so Cross-Centred That Your Lord is Dead
• Complicity and Change
• On Unity - for Rachel Held Evans' "Rally to Restore Unity"
• On Niche Churches and Prefab Christian Cultures: Why Mark Driscoll is Right but He's Got it All Wrong - from Out of Bounds
• Music videos and thoughts:
• K'naan's Take a Minute (An Easter Reflection)
• On the Mount of the Lord it will be Provided
• Apocalypse Now: Sufjan Stevens' John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

• On the Controversy over Rob Bell's Love Wins:
• Rob Bell, Love Wins, and Karl Barth
• What wins in your Doctrine of Election?
• What has Lotso to do with Bashir?
• The C&MA Statement on Hell I, II, III, IV, V, VI 
• Karl Barth on God's Judgment

• Reflections on or related to Willie Jennings' The Christian Imagination:
• Willie Jennings' Social Imagination
• Multi-culture and the Christian Imagination
• Leadership and the Christian Imagination: Always the Host and never the Hosted?
• Questions about Franklin Graham and the Christian Social Imagination
• Solzhenitsyn's Speech and our Fragmented Stories
• The Resurrection of Pastoral Ministry - from Out of Bounds
• Church in World: Willie Jennings and the Christian Social Imagination - from Out of Bounds

• How to Treat People Like Tax Collectors - reflection on Matthew 18, John Calvin, and Jesus' Church
• To Learn to Love Your Neighbours must You Learn to Love Yourself? - from Out of Bounds
• Chrysostom on Submission in Marriage - from Colossians 3 to today
• Future Men vs. Fathers and Sons: Further Thoughts on Gender Typology - from Out of Bounds
• Sobering Statistics - deaths we'd rather not think about. staggering. worth remembering
• Forgiveness in Genesis I, II, and III, as well as in Exodus.

2010
(See Jubilee Centre Blog Nomination)

• Top 35 Non-Fiction
• The Sins of Memory and Forgiveness
• The Bittersweetness of Christmas - inspired by Sufjan Stevens
• The Grace to Say 'Our Father' - a children's talk gone wrong (or right?)
• We are no Longer Citizens We are Consumers - reflections on a video about consumption and ecological concern.
• Honouring Veterans with a War on War
• Taking Sin Seriously by not Taking it that Seriously - reflections on David Kelsey's Eccentric Existence.
• On Karl Barth & No Country for Old Men - essay in the 4th annual Karl Barth Blog Conference
• At the Neighbourhood Mosque
• The Story of Mario and Luigi
• Everyone's A Theologian I, II, III
• Back to the Shack or Karl Barth on the Shack
• A Punch in the Face - a dose of reality
• Albums I've Lived By

2009

• On Losing to GK Chesterton - published article in St. Austin's Review
• Bad Words II: 'No Crying He Makes'
• A Brief History of Christian Forgiveness, part 1 and 2
• The Walk, More Walk, More Talk - poetic reflections on the first weeks on campus in Aberdeen
• Into the Ivory Tower
• Dead Poets and the Power of Persuasion - not sure if this landed anywhere, but the pedagogical and homiletic questions it raised are pretty important to me
• Trinity Sunday with Sufjan Stevens and Andrei Rublev
• Guilt, part 2 - I liked this, and I liked that Matthew liked it. That's all.
• Evasive Manoeuvres and Propaganda do not an Alliance Make - some pretty pointed words regarding a troubling trajectory I feel in my denomination, and church-growth based evangelicalism as a whole
• Out of the Comfortable Quiver - wrestles through some sticky but important dilemmas regarding raising kids in this world
• A Little Church Satire - some (de)motivational posters for ministry that I made up

2008

• On Pastoral Leadership Today - published article in Ministry Magazine
• Great Fiction - a portal to my reviews of my favourite novels of all time
• Feats of Flight and the Tower of Babel - on human progress
• TF Torrance: The Locus of Church Unity - variation on a theme based on Alister McGrath's biography
• The Night Here Comes Again - we had just had twins when this snapshot of parental life was written
• Birth Day  - a tribute to my mom, which says a lot about parenting, and Jesus, too
• General (Dis)Assembly: intro, part 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3 - an in-depth response to a major issue in my denomination which garnered much great feedback and, as of 2010, is still not resolved
• Slavoj Zizek and Infinite Justice 
• The Prince of Peace Smokes a Peace Pipe - an excerpt from my seminary paper written on the residential schools legacy in Canada and a theological approach to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• The Apology - reflections on forgiveness, truth, reconciliation, healing, and complicity after the Canadian Prime Minister's (much needed) apology to Canadian aboriginals 
• Unity in What? - when it comes to a Christian view of community and communion, this is a paradigm-shaper for me
• The Rain - a poem on parenting, among a whole lot of other things
• Of Disproportionate Importance - some random thoughts, perhaps too much information, but I'm fond of it and wish I could always be this succinct
• An Approach to Biblical Hermeneutics - a seminary position paper, which comes off fairly tentative but I'd dare say defines my default approach fairly well
• Excessive Epistemology Becomes Cognitive Cannibalism - reflections on agnosticism, faith, and certainty triggered by a Luke Timothy Johnson excerpt
• Valedictory Address - a "state of the church" and ministry kind of thing delivered at my seminary graduation
• Snow on the Dome at St Paul's Cathedral - a great experience visiting London with my wife
• The Epistemological Side of Faith in the Crucified - thinking about a dialogical approach to thinking, and Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace

2007

• Facing the Complexity of Justice and Evil - a book review of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela's A Human Being Died That Night
• Church Re-formation - Trying to put words to the erosion of my faith-in-words
• Re-formation? - some reflections on our current (potential) epoch-change
• Films that Have Stuck
• You Gotta Love the Church
• Lament of an Evangelical - a poem I wrote during some times of searching
• Life in the Mess - things written here have since led to further studies in forgiveness and reconciliation.
• Bergman and Chesterton: Struggling to Express the Unthinkable
• The Travesty of Blanket Forgiveness
• The Alienating Strategies of the Seeker Sensitive Movement
• The Leadership Summit's Inordinate Triumphalism
• Common Interests and Community
• What Did I Miss?  - a reflection on the Lord's Supper
• This Side of Sunday - explains the blog title
• Creation Care - I get a bit worked up here, but I stand by it
• The Dozen Worst Movies I've Ever Seen - I could think of a few to add, but this is still pretty definitive
• Authenticity and Establishment - my first seminary paper. It really wasn't great, but the conclusion posted here represents my thinking on the church quite well
• Communion and Consensus I - early variation on a perpetual theme, inspired by Sidney Lumet's Making Movies no less

2005-2006

• I've Solved the Worship Problem - a bit biting, but this is one of my all time favourites
• What Happened at Bethlehem?
• Position Paper on Women in Leadership - a watershed paper for me
• Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul: A Review
• Shake Hands With the Devil: A Review - this book by Romeo D'Allaire on his time in Rwanda impacted me a great deal
• Blood is Hard to Ignore - my first post (and maybe my best!)