This May I graduated from Bethel Seminary with a Master of Divinity Degree. The day before commencement the graduating seminary students, the staff, and faculty gather for a communion service. I was asked by the commencement committee to offer the student response to the scriptural texts for the weekend. While the seminary asked that I…
You were lied to about Christmas. I am willing to bet that the Christmas pageant you’re used to featured a very important character: The Innkeeper. This heartless soul was so concerned with his inn having no-vacancy that he turned away the mother and father of Jesus. Leaving them to give birth to the messiah rejected…
When I was a kid I lied to my grandmother every time I saw her. For as long as I can remember my parents, siblings and I would go on a road trip to visit my Grandmother in Wichita, Kansas every summer. Each time we went, when we neared the end of our visit, my…
This father’s day I was reminded of Henri Nouwen’s description of the prodigal’s father in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son: God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn’t move and expects his children to come to him, apologize for their aberrant behavior, beg for forgiveness, and promise to do better. To the…
What Jeremiah can teach us about the stresses of Modern Life In the first half of the 6th century BCE a bunch of Judean officials let their anxiety get the better of them. Stressed out and overworked they betrayed their best hope for salvation, the Prophet Jeremiah, and left him for dead at the bottom of a…
After twelve years of work, filmmaker Tim Mahoney is finally releasing, for one night only (tonight) his documentary, “Patterns of Evidence,” about the archaeological and historical evidence for the biblical exodus. I had the opportunity to view a pre-released version of the film back in November and can attest to the production value that twelve…
I love the Elijah story, partly because it has so much to teach us about what role doubt plays in the life of a believer and, partly, because I think that the church in America has done a poor job of handling and responding to individual believers’ natural periods of doubt. We tend to excoriate…
In this eighteen minute video, I talk with author and pastor, Brad Gray about his new book Make Your Mark; Getting Right what Samson got Wrong. His book takes a new look at the character of Samson from the book of Judges. Using all of the archaeological, cultural and linguistic data available to him, Gray, shows…
We had the “2014 Largent Family Reunion” two weeks ago in Minnesota. The running joke for the entire reunion was that my wife and I, as the sole surviving son, had to “get busy” producing a son to carry on the Largent family name. Things haven’t changed much in three and half thousand years. Indeed,…
When I was a young Christian, I would frequently call on God to bless my life unilaterally. That is to say, I would petition God for him to act on my behalf, or the behalf of my family and friends without considering how I could, myself, be the source of that blessing. Unfortunately it’s a…
For most of us, Judas Iscariot is the great villain of the passion narrative, but for Jesus, Judas was the guest of honor. We know this because of one seemingly innocuous detail that every gospel writer chose to include when discussing the last days of Jesus. At the Last supper, Jesus and the twelve disciples…
