Keith Schwanz

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.

— Vita Sackville-West

Church

Christian Witness in a Postmodern World

In the 1960s I assisted with an outreach survey organized by the local ministerial association.  The survey assumed most people had prior church involvement. In the 1970s the secular university campus ministry I attended used […]

Mar, 21

The Ancient-Future Generation

I came of age in the 1960s and smile at the memory of bell-bottom pants and paisley print shirts. Other memories, however, don’t prompt a grin. Some described the social upheaval of the era as […]

Mar, 11

20-Somethings

On Monday evening, July 17th, I met with our daughter’s Life Group, a small group ministry of Portland First Church of the Nazarene.  This is a group of young adults, almost all of them in […]

Jul, 18

Characteristics of a New Kind of Church

FELLOWSHIP The new gathering is a community … We understand the church to be a community of persons seeking to follow Jesus.  For the community to function effectively, every person is both a leader and […]

May, 19

Drinking from the Well, Part 3

I thought that I’d go on to other topics when I finished “Drinking from the Well, Part 2,” but in his comment on Part 2 Mike King asked about my reflection on the Eucharist at […]

May, 13

Drinking from the Well, Part 2

Here we go with Part 2 of my reflections of a Sunday at Jacob’s Well. The Word section of the worship time was my favorite.  It had depth and clearly connected with life in 2006.  […]

May, 11

Drinking from the Well, Part 1

After many months of saying, “Someday we’ll go to Jacob’s Well,” we finally made it on Sunday. We’ve lived in Kansas City for five years, but had never been to the Westport neighborhood where Jacob’s […]

May, 09

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