By Chaplain Mike In our introduction to this series, “Church Year Spirituality,” I gave five primary reasons why I think it advantageous for Christians to form their spiritual lives — their walk with God through Christ — around the liturgical year. It enables us to live in God’s story. It keeps the main thing the [...]
About Chaplain Mike
Chaplain Mike works with a hospice organization in central Indiana. He has been in pastoral ministry since 1978, serving in churches in Maryland, Vermont, Illinois, and Indiana before moving into chaplaincy work. He is married to a wonderful gifted wife, Gail, and they have four children and three grandchildren. He thinks baseball is the greatest game ever invented, suffers annually as a Chicago Cubs fan, and is looking forward to putting on a cap again this spring to coach his grandson's Little League team. He loves a wide variety of music, spends way too much money on books, is happy to live in a place where there are four seasons, and is a "true believer" in Apple computers, having used them since 1988. Luther is his favorite theologian, Bach his favorite composer, James Taylor his favorite singer-songwriter, Chicago his favorite city, and hiking his favorite form of exercise. He would love to do more with photography and dreams of having a place in the mountains of Arizona some day. His heart has been captured by the grace of God in Jesus Christ and considers himself a post-evangelical disciple seeking a Jesus-shaped life and hoping to help the church do the same. He is forever grateful to his friend, Michael Spencer, for giving him an opportunity to write for Internet Monk.
Church Year Spirituality
15 Nov by
By Chaplain Mike Next Sunday is the final Lord’s Day in the Church Year. Christians who follow the liturgical calendar will begin a new year of living in the Gospel with the commencement of Advent on Nov. 28. The diagram on the right gives an overview of the annual Church calendar. Advent is the season [...]
Jonathan Fisk on Luke 21
14 Nov by
Today’s Gospel • Luke 21:5-19 I had a busy day Saturday on call for my work, so I did not get to hunker down and deal with the text satisfactorily to give you a decent message this Sunday. So… Here’s a message by Rev. Jonathan Fisk of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield, PA, [...]
Just because it’s in the Bible . . .
12 Nov by
. . . doesn’t mean you should put it on your church sign. Welcome, neighbor!
Guest Post: A Woman in Ministry
12 Nov by
MOD NOTE: Angie merely summarized her position on women in ministry in this post. If you want to see a full expression of my Biblical position on egalitarianism, read “Why I Am an Egalitarian,” which I wrote in Sept. This will enable you to see the relevant Biblical texts without having to rehash them all [...]
The Passing of the Greatest Generation
11 Nov by
By Chaplain Mike for Veterans Day, 2010 This piece was originally written in 2005 to share with my hospice team for Memorial Day. As we honor our veterans today, I thought it would be good to share it with you. Yesterday, I did another funeral for one of these fine men, a friend who served [...]
The Linchpin
10 Nov by
By Chaplain Mike I feel badly that I wasn’t able to follow yesterday’s discussion on our friend Garrett League’s post closely. Fascinating! I especially appreciate that we had some folks who joined us who are strongly convinced of and committed to scientific reasoning, even going so far as to claim that religion cannot give us [...]
Statue Update! Big Jesus—Polish-style
9 Nov by
By Chaplain Mike “This is the culmination of my life’s work as a priest. I felt inspired to fulfill Jesus’ will, and today I give thanks to him for allowing me to fulfill his will,” said Father Sylvester Zawadzki, known as the “builder priest” by the people of Swiebodzin in western Poland. He was speaking [...]
What Would That Say about God?
9 Nov by
By Chaplain Mike If an evolutionary model should turn out to best explain the way the universe works from a scientific perspective, what would that tell us about God? How would our view of God change? What would we have to adjust in our thinking about who he is and how he works? These are [...]
Guest Post — Science and Faith Issues: A Personal Testimony and a Plea for Perspective
8 Nov by
Update: Sorry, while I was away today, we received some spam that appeared in the comments. I have deleted these and related comments. CM. Note from CM: Earlier this year, I was involved in a discussion about Genesis and creation issues on a site where my views were most certainly not welcome. I kept noticing [...]
