The Roofless Church

Author: Higher Up IDEALS

  • On Being A Single Mother In A Married Father’s Body

    Today I came across this post that I wrote for an older blog 3 years ago. With so many different family configurations, I felt that this might be a good post to share again. Recently, I hit a wall with trying to express some of my outlooks on the world when it hit me that…

  • That The Seeing May Be Made Blind

    As I said in the video above, on Nov 15, 2016 I will be co-facilitating an experience with Kara Dansky of 1,000 Arms and Brian Rocheleau of The Blind Cafe where we will invite people to have an encounter with themselves with regard to issues of race. The foundation of the program will be based…

  • Winning and Losing

    Originally posted on The Roofless Church: Matthew 13:12 – For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Have you ever had dreams of winning it big?  Wow!  Imagine what you could do with more. …

  • If You Don’t Bear Your Cross, Someone Else Will Have To

    On July 17, 2016, I preached a sermon entitled “Broken For You”. The idea behind the sermon came down to the idea that if people took 100% responsibility for their lives the whole world would be transformed in an instant. The spark for the sermon came from Jesus’ teaching that those who desire to follow…

  • If There Was No Such Thing As Language…

    Recently I’ve made the error of reading comments from people at the bottom of some the articles about the recent shootings, racism in America, so called white privilege, and the Black Lives Matters movement. For years I stopped reading the comments because after doing so I typically walk away with a sense of foreboding. I…

  • In The Name of Justice

    In recent sermon, I chose to write a letter to my name in order to express to the congregation how in our society something as small as our name can be used by some people to discriminate. I further illustrated my point by giving them a list of famous people who changed their names because…

  • Mixed Feelings on Race?

    After hearing about the recent shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling I started asking myself what I might be able to offer to the community in terms of creating an opportunity for transformation. Soon I was supplied with an answer and a subsequent confirmation. On Thursday afternoon as I walked down Pearl Street in…

  • Message In A Body

    On a trip to Bali, Indonesia in 2016 with my family, I had an experience that is somewhat difficult to describe. I was meditating our first evening there asking God to guide our family to a good driver who would take us around the area. I asked that it be someone with whom we would…

  • The Land of Confusion (This Is The World We Live In)

    With the recent murders  in Orlando, the increasing number of teen suicides all over the headlines, and a general sense of foreboding among many people, I sometimes find myself wrestling with my role as a pastor. A large part of my role, as I understand it, is thinking about these issues and trying to find,…

  • Do Your Names and Labels Define You?

    How do you relate to the labels that have been assigned to you or that you have assumed?  Are they prisons that bind you or do they demonstrate choices that you have made and relationships that you are a part of? Do you define the labels or do the labels define you? Here is a…