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We Sing Christmas Carols for a Month, and Wonder Why Advent Feels Hollow. Here's a Different Way.
I’m putting on my Music Director hat for this one.
One big problem with Christmas music,
is that we sing it all throughout Advent (the weeks leading up to Christmas), so by the time Christmas actually comes around, we’re all kinda tired of it.
Go ahead! Name an Advent hymn other than “The Advent Hymn” and “Lo How A Rose.”
If you named anything at all, please contact me so I can learn from you.
Anyways,
Problem: Christmas feels boring
Solution: five new Advent Hymns
Outcome: Christmas Eve Worship feels better.
So here are the hymns, but let’s start from the beginning
The Bible Never Mentions Abortion. Here's Why
Christianity has produced at least five major theories of what the cross accomplished — Ransom, Christus Victor, Sacrifice/Access, Moral Influence, and Penal Substitution — spanning 2,000 years, and no ecumenical council has ever declared one of them "the" answer.
The Bible Does Not Tell You to Stay with Your Abuser. Here's What It Actually Says.
Abuse breaks the marriage covenant. The abuser broke it — not the person who leaves. The verse most commonly used to trap victims in dangerous marriages is half a verse, and the half that gets cut off condemns marital violence. The passage used to enforce wifely submission actually commands mutual submission, has no verb in the Greek for the wife's role, and spends nine verses commanding husbands to sacrificial love — every word of which an abusive husband has violated. The Bible does not tell you to stay. The Bible consistently sides with the oppressed against the violent, commands liberation from bondage, and treats covenant violation — not the acknowledgment of covenant violation — as the sin. If you are being hurt, leaving is not unfaithfulness. It is the most theologically honest thing you can do.
‘Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child' Is Not in the Bible. Here's Why That Matters.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child" is not a Bible verse. It is a line from a 1662 satirical poem mocking Puritans. The Hebrew word translated "rod" is the same word used in Psalm 23 for the shepherd's staff that brings comfort. And Proverbs is wisdom literature — observations about life, not divine commands. If you were hit as a child and told it was biblical, you were given a 17th-century joke dressed up as the word of God. The Bible's actual witness on children points consistently toward protection, not punishment.
The Word 'Homosexual' Was Not in Any Bible Until 1946. Here's Why
For 564 years of English Bible translation — from the first Wycliffe Bible in 1382 through 1945 — no translator used the word "homosexual," because the concept of sexual orientation as an innate identity did not exist in the ancient world and the Greek words in question don't mean that
America Is Not in the Bible. Here's Why That Matters
The Bible was completed approximately 1,681 years before the United States existed. It says nothing about America, democracy, constitutional republics, or capitalism. Every verse cited for American exceptionalism — every single one — is about ancient Israel, Solomon's temple, or Jesus's disciples in occupied Palestine. None mentions America because none could. But the deeper problem is not the anachronism. The deeper problem is what this reading does: it takes covenant language belonging to another community, replaces the original meaning with a national myth, claims divine authority for a political project, and silences anyone who questions it. That is not faithful interpretation. It is the same pattern that shows up every time Scripture is weaponized. And it has consequences — for how we treat immigrants, how we justify wars, and how we confuse patriotism with faithfulness.
Romans 1 Is a Rhetorical Trap. Here's How It Actually Works
Paul describes pagan idolatry in Romans 1 to get his audience nodding along in judgment — then catches them in Romans 2:1 with "therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others" — meaning that using Romans 1 to condemn people is literally the thing Paul condemns.
Romans is Paul's most carefully structured letter. It builds an argument across sixteen chapters. Pulling verses from chapter 1 without reading chapter 2 is like leaving a courtroom after the prosecution rests and assuming the trial is over.
Leviticus Was Written by Priests. Was It Written for Priests? The Answer Is Weirder Than You'd Think.
I’ve sometimes wondered, “is it true that Leviticus is only meant for Priests?
Or is it also meant for the rest of Ancient Israel?
So I decided to look into it. Not with an agenda. Not with a matter to debunk.
Just, Biblical curiosity.
Let’s do this:
The Bible Records Six Suicides and Condemns None of Them to Hell. Here's why this matters.
The "suicide = hell" teaching was not citing Scripture. It has no biblical basis.
And it has caused incalculable harm to grieving families.
If you are in pain right now: The door out of suffering is not to stay in the cycle that’s harming you; it’s a radical change of direction toward help and healing.
One Chaplain's Definition of “Harm”
I know what you're thinking. "Do no harm" sounds like it could mean anything. And you're right — if I don't tell you what I mean by harm, then anyone can fill in their own definition and use it against whoever they want. "Being gay does harm." Done. Framework dismantled.
In other words, I could just point at whatever my opponent is doing, and say “look! That’s harm!”
So let me share a definition of harm.
Not from a theology book. From a hospital.
In the hospital, you learn something about life that changes how you see everything else. You learn that in a clean, nourishing, safe environment, life tends toward certain things. Wounds tend to heal. Muscles tend to relax when the situation relaxes. Hearts tend to hear each other when the room is quiet enough.
You don't make a wound heal. You can't force it. But you can stop making it worse. You can clean the environment. You can remove the thing that's still cutting. You can let the body do what bodies do when they're given half a chance.
That's what I mean by harm: the thing that's still cutting.
And that's what I mean by "do no harm": first, stop making a messy situation worse.
Genesis and the Big Bang Completely Agree. Here’s how.
As ministers, we all have those questions that catch us off guard, and for some of us, it’s “The Big Bang.” If you grew up being told that the Bible is the word of God — and it is — and then someone tells you that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and started with a singularity instead of a speaking voice, it can feel like you have to choose. Bible or science. Faith or evidence. God or physics.
You don't have to choose between reason and faith.
Let’s look closer…
Jonathan Cain, America's Great Theologian. Journey to the White House. (Journey Series)
You might not know his name, but you know his teachings.
Jonathan Cain is the most widely disseminated Christian theologian of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
That's not a compliment. That's not an insult. It's just math. More people have sung "Don't Stop Believin'" as an act of communal faith than have sung most hymns written in the last fifty years. Every karaoke bar on earth is a chapel, and that song is the call to worship. The strangers waiting up and down the boulevard are a congregation. The midnight train going anywhere is a pilgrimage without a fixed destination. And "don't stop believin'" is a credal statement that refuses to specify its object.
Believin' in what?
It never says. It structurally cannot say, because saying would limit its reach.
People Making Mistakes: Jonathan Cain's Theology of Repentance (Journey Series)
In the final article of this series, "Jonathan Cain, America's Great Theologian," I'm going to make a hard claim about Jonathan Cain's trajectory from apophatic songwriter to the Rose Garden. Before I do that, I need to make a kind one.
Jonathan Cain is at his best when he's being a repentant failure.
That sounds unkind. It isn't. It's the highest compliment I know how to give a theologian.
Because repentance, real repentance, not the performative groveling that passes for it in most churches, is the hardest theological posture to sustain. It requires you to stay in the tension between what you did and what you meant, between who you are and who you want to be, without resolving it prematurely in either direction. No cheap grace. No self-destruction. Just the honest, uncomfortable middle.
From Mystery Mountain to the City of Hope: Songs to Learn About. (Journey Series)
Journey has an enormous catalog, and most people know about six songs. That's fine. But if you want to understand what Journey actually is, the musicianship, the theological undercurrents, the tension between eras, the stuff that makes this band worth taking seriously, these are the songs I'd point you toward.
Some of these are deep cuts. Some of them are from albums you've never heard of. That's the point.
Confirmation Part 2/10: English Bibles
For most of Christian history, ordinary people couldn't read the Bible in their own language. Scripture existed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (the Vulgate), and access was controlled by the church and the educated. Translating the Bible into English was a long, costly, and sometimes deadly process — people gave their lives for the conviction that everyone should be able to read Scripture for themselves.
Confirmation Part 3/10: Christianity
Christianity and the Gospel of Jesus
Christianity is currently the largest religious tradition in the world — and if you're studying this, you're part of a story that started roughly 2,000 years ago. The people who identify with Christianity are known as Christians. Many Christians identify with a specific branch, such as "Roman Catholic" or "United Methodist." Christians uphold the unique importance of Jesus. For Christians, Jesus is considered a human, the Son of God, and/or the living presence of God.
The Birthplace of Christianity
Confirmation Part 4/10: People Called Methodists
What's a Methodist?
John Wesley put it this way: "A Methodist is one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength."
John Wesley was an ordained Anglican priest from England. At a prayer meeting in London in 1738, he had a powerful spiritual experience which inspired the rest of his teaching. Wesley described the moment this way:
"I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
Confirmation Part 5/10: Foundational Methodist Teachings
Foundational Teachings in Methodism
What Do Methodists Believe?
This isn't a simple question. Methodists don't agree on all aspects of doctrine. In general, though, Methodists tend to agree on major Christian teachings.
(Where do these teachings come from? The Bible, Wesley's writings, the Articles of Religion, the Confession of Faith, the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist Hymnal, and the work of theologians and educators across the centuries.)
United Methodists share a common heritage with other Christians:
Conviction that God has mercy and love for all people
Belief in the Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Faith in the mystery of salvation through Jesus Christ
Celebration of the Sacraments
Some Foundational Methodist Teachings…
Confirmation Part 6/10: Advanced Methodist Teachings
Justification by Grace Alone
In Christianity, "justification" is the event or process by which sinners are made or declared to be righteous in the sight of God. During John Wesley's time, two common Reformation teachings shaped the conversation: "Justification by Faith Alone" (sola fide), meaning that justification comes on the basis of faith, and "Scripture Alone" (sola scriptura), meaning that the Bible is the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice.
Wesley affirmed the importance of both faith and Scripture, but his teachings emphasized something distinctive: Justification by Grace Alone — salvation comes by divine grace, or "unmerited favor" only, not as something merited or earned.
Confirmation Part 7/10: A History of Methodism
Every church has a story. Here's ours.
The United Methodist Church shares its history with the ancient Jewish faith, the early Christian Church, the Anglican Church (English), the Methodist church (English), the Evangelical and Moravian Churches (German), the United Church of Canada, and other Methodist bodies in the U.S.
United Methodist faith and doctrine are based on the Word of God — the Holy Bible.
"We believe the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, reveals the Word of God so far as it is necessary for our salvation." — The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2012