Bo’s Blog

Joy is our word for the week. As Easter people we distinguish between joy and happiness. Listen to the audio podcast here: https://vermonthillsumc.org/podcast/joy-may-17/

The Church of Us vs Them week 9 Brainstorm Enjoy the video below or listen to the audio podcast https://vermonthillsumc.org/podcast/us-vs-them-brainstorm-9/

In this Easter series I have been using the notion of différance used by Jacque Derrida to illustrate how hope, faith, and love are always both different in some sense than we expected and also deferred to a degree. Today I want to talk about the future. For years as I have taught seminary courses I have tried to convince my students that the saying, “the more things change the more they stay the same” has never been less true that it...

We live in a very strange time. The old Chinese proverb” may you live in interesting times” was a curse originally and many of us feel like we live under that curse. It is an interesting time of reversal. For instance, just a couple months ago grocery stores all over the country banned plastic bags and wanted you to bring your own reusable cloth bags. As with anything in modern consumerism, this became a form of both utility but also...

The Church of Us vs Them BrainStorm week 8 Audio podcast here: https://vermonthillsumc.org/podcast/us-vs-them-8/

In this short sermon we look the separation of faith and belief.  Faith and Belief Let’s have some fun with words. In English, faith and belief have become somewhat interchangeable. I would like to pull them apart a little bit this morning to make some more room for what I believe it is a helpful distinction. I want to decouple the two concepts. Beliefs are often held as mental agreements like very strong opinions. We see this in...