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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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Some Lessons from Tilling My Garden
Well, my prospective, perhaps presumptive garden, that is. One of the important elements to understanding stories in the Bible, parables included, is our perspective. In Christian circles, when we hear “the sower went forth to sow,” (Matthew 13:3), or perhaps “a farmer went out to sow his seed,” we generally see ourselves in the role…
Praying and Studying to Change Yourself
Yesterday I wrote a bit about using prayer and Bible study as a starting point for change. The problem is that it’s very easy to pray and study the Bible in such a way that it makes you a worse person. I’ve found a relatively simple way to determine whether I’m doing this myself: If…
Keys to a Church Following Jesus
Before I dig into this series organized around Dave Black’s book Seven Marks of a New Testament Church, I want to make a couple of off-the-cuff remarks. Over the last few years I’ve come to believe that we have two key elements that need to be changed, but more fundamentally, we keep talking about the…
Dr. Agatha Thrash
I met Dr. Agatha Thrash back in 1974 when I went to stay with my brother-in-law Ted Nick and my sister Betty Rae. I managed the Country Life Natural Food Store (it was not then a restaurant) for nearly a year. Well, I was manager and sole worker. I didn’t really get to know Dr….
Link: Sinners Don’t Come to Us
9 Reasons Why Sinners Went to Jesus but Don’t Come to Us.
Spectrums: Liberal to Conservative Is not Enough
Last weekend Dave Black was our guest here in Pensacola. I recorded some videos for promotional and educational purposes and Dave also preached and talked about missions (with plenty of pictures) at Chumuckla Community Church. I will be posting some of these videos soon, but they are not quite ready yet. Dave is a professor…
Eschatology: Mark 13
While I titled the event Eschatology: Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, I will be focusing on the first. I will be mentioning the parallels and likely working directly from gospel parallels. I’m embedding the YouTube viewer first, then I’ll make a few comments. I had hoped to post more earlier, but the work…
Learning about the Homeless
Over the years I’ve heard many discussions of what one should do about people asking for money at streetcorners, or at the exit from the interstate, or wherever they may be found. The vast majority of these discussions were about ethics. Do I have a duty to help such people if I can? If I…
Dave Black at Chumuckla Community Church
I had the pleasure today of hosting Dr. David Alan Black at Chumuckla Community Church. I’ve been teaching there for the last five weeks, and preached once. Today Dave shared pictures of some of his mission work and also preached. His sermon was titled “Jesus and the 30 Year Transition, working from Luke 3:23. Well,…
Dave Black Visiting
I spent the morning in the library at First UMC here in Pensacola as Kyle Hall recorded videos of interviews with Dave Black. We discussed his books Why Four Gospels?, The Jesus Paradigm, Christian Archy, Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?, It’s All Greek to Me, and Seven Marks of a New Testament…
Eschatology: They Remembered Him
I had hoped to do a bit more writing on how we interpret the Bible before tonight’s discussion. In diving into teaching a bit on eschatology, I have come to feel a bit like someone who has encountered one of the versions of the certification test for senior generalists, or the ultimate final exam. (You’ll…
Speaking of Biblical Interpretation
James McGrath posted a rather humorous piece this morning, titled The Fundamentalist Interprets Scripture (Sheep and Goats). I think he makes an important point here, but it is my belief that we all have our ways of avoiding what scripture says. The liberal finds things out of date. The conservative finds ways of categorizing texts,…
Can Scripture Be Its Own Interpreter?
I’ve been thinking a bit about this common statement, and I think the answer is both “yes” and “no.” And therein lies a significant problem, if not several! I recall an online discussion some years ago with a gentleman who maintained that one should always take what he called the plain meaning of the text….
My Goal in Fostering Dialogue
I get this question quite frequently: What are you trying to accomplish? If it’s not presented as a question, it’s presented as an assumption. Here are some major options: My goal is to advance a liberal theological agenda, i.e., to make people more liberal by getting conservatives to listen to or read liberal opinions. My…
Finding What We Expect
Last night after my discussion of eschatology, in which I mentioned that we tend to discover what we’re looking for in scripture, I returned to the house. Now I think this warning is important. We need to check our questions. On my hub site, henryneufeld.com, I use the slogan “helping you find the right questions.”…
Eschatology: Surveying Symbols and Sources
Tonight I’m giving myself permission to ramble in my presentation. “How will that be different?” you ask. I would imagine largely in that I won’t feel guilty while I ramble! There are few areas that demonstrate differences in views of biblical inspiration and interpretation than eschatology, whether we mean end-time events or our own end-of-life…
What the Bible Really Says? Really?
I opened my mailbox today to be greeted by a slick flyer inviting me to discover what the Bible really says about a variety of things. Among the the questions I’m told I can get answered: What is the future of our country during this economic downturn? What does the Bible really say about the…
Beginning My Eschatology Study
Last week was the closing session in my online study of the gospel According to John using Herold Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John: Exercises in Biblical Theology. I now turn to a new subject, eschatology, and will start with the book Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Edward W. H. Vick. The reason…
Completing My According to John Study
At the beginning of the year I began a journey through the gospel According to John, using as my guide the book Meditations on According to John by Herold Weiss. I began this study largely for myself. I admit it. My motivation was selfish. I wanted to force myself to stick with the study week…
Explaining the Difference Between John and the Synoptics
In the comments to my announcement for Thursday night’s interview with Dr. Herold Weiss there was a comment that included a question. I missed it and failed to ask it during the interview. I e-mailed it to Dr. Weiss, and he sent me a response. Since this ties into the topic of the interview, I…
From My Editing Work: Neglecting the Gospel
This is from the forthcoming book The Incredible Shrinking Gospel by Lee Wyatt. Formatting progress doesn’t allow me to tell you the precise page number. Oddly, his [Jesus’] ministry as we find it in our canonical gospels suffers considerable neglect in North American churches at present. Conservative churches tend to find their theological center in…
According to John: Final Interview with Herold Weiss
Well, I hope it’s not my final interview ever, and since we’re going to announce his next book, already under contract (and I have a preliminary manuscript in hand!), it likely won’t be. But it’s a wind-up interview for my study of According to John using Dr. Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John. You…
According to John: Abide in My Love
It has been that kind of a day. I apologize for not posting this earlier. You can find out more about this discussion on the Google+ Event Page or view it using the YouTube embedded below.
According to John: Where Are You From
I’ve been planning to create some short notes on John, discussions of topics about which I’ve gotten a number of questions. I recorded the first of these today, and here’s the embedded YouTube video: Tonight I’ve decided that I will focus much more on the trial of Jesus and the relationship between ritual, symbol, and…