Free Stuff
My sheet music and other free resources are available here. Just follow this link.
These things are under a Creative Commons license that allows you to download them and copy them freely—for any non-commercial use.
Enjoy!
Store
I have books, CDs, and a video series for sale from my store page. (I wish I could just give everything away, but one must eat!)
I’m especially excited about my new book, now available: My Burden Is Light: A Pastor’s Plea for Rationality, Honesty, and Humility.
About
Merry, Mystical Missives
Here you’ll find everything I’ve sent out to the mailing list for The Merry Mystic.
Tired of You
I don’t want to alienate my politically conservative friends, God bless ‘em. And I’m a bit embarrassed to add any more political ranting to our overheated national discourse. But I do want to be honest in sharing my work here.
So here’s fair warning: if you’re tired of political rants, you might want to skip this one. Because it’s a song addressed to President Trump. It’s called, “Tired of You.”
[youtube id=LcEHOaoQ7N4]
P.S. This YouTube video is mostly a still image over the music, with only a little performance video at the end. If you’d just like the music, here it is:
P.P.S. I really had to work to edit this song down to a manageable length. There were, initially, a lot more words. Because I know words. I have the best words….
Slogan Survey Results
In this week’s video, I report on the results of last week’s survey.
[youtube id=H5ASwGV2pJo]
In addition to the results reported in the video, there were quite a few write-in candidates. Here are the slogans proposed by other readers, unedited and in no particular order:
- Progressive Christianity – Christianity’s Progressive Rock station – all Yes, all the time.
- Get in touch with your own personal spirituality
- Progressive Christianity– because we really want to remain Christian.
- – because we don’t know everything -yet.
- “Accepting new knowledge since _(fill in your own date)_”
- “Where thinking is still allowed, and encouraged”
- “Tell your story, then listen to ours”
- Progressive Christianity – because we need to progress!
- Progressive Christianity – It’s on my bucket list!
- Progressive Christianity — Sounds better than retrograde Christianity
- Progressive Christianity – Practicing more than we preach.
- Let us begin to live the life that Jesus modeled for us.
- …because what if they found Jesus’ body; would it negate His life and teachings?
- Love yourself and your neighbor.
- We may not be 1st but we are way ahead of whatever is 2nd. ( just saying )
- Progressive Christianity- because Jesus way was always forward into the midst of life
- Progressive Christianity-because saying, “I have faith,” isn’t a valid replacement for evidence.
- Progressive Christianity: Because we are one big friggin family!
- Progressive Christianity – marching forward towards world peace not backwards to world domination.
Thanks to everyone who participated! I’m going to close the survey now, but please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments below.
Which Slogan Is Your Favorite?
Hello, friends! This week, I’ve been aware of a number of really bland church slogans. For example:
- “Everyone welcome”—as if there were any church in the world that didn’t make that claim.
- “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity”—as if that settled anything. (That epigram goes back to 1617, when Marco Antonio de Dominis, an archbishop of the Roman Catholic church, wrote, “in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.”)
- “Jesus loves you”—not a bad claim in itself, but often used as a launching pad for cruelty. As in, “Jesus loves you, so it’s too bad you’re gay and going to hell.” I wonder whether the love of Jesus wasn’t being pronounced over the body of Marco Antonio de Dominis, while it was being exhumed, dragged through the streets, and burned for heresy, along with all his works.
Anyway: I’ve invented some slogans for an advertising campaign for progressive Christianity. I’m looking for something less anodyne than the usual stuff—something with a Merry-Mystical touch of irreverent humor. It would help me if you’d take just a minute to read my suggested slogans here, and vote on your favorite. There’s also a place to suggest a slogan of your own.
So please, take the survey: which slogan is your favorite? I’ll share the results, and any (printable) write-in votes, next week.
Thanks and best blessings,
Adam
I Am Not Sean Spicer
What do pastors and political operatives have in common? Too darned much, sometimes.
[youtube id=HszW8nvvUYA]
These are the (mostly video) messages sent out to The Merry Mystic mailing list.
Sermons and Such
Every week, I preach in the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, Illinois. I’m not sending most of these out to The Merry Mystic mailing list; but on the outside chance you’d like to see a sermon, here they are.
How To Make Jesus Mad
Here’s one way to make Jesus really mad.
Wisdom: Where Reason and Kindness Meet
It’s true: people are idiots, and idiocy kills. On the other hand …
Everupspringing
Here’s a “sermon” I preached in my church recently. I put the word in horror quotes there, because this wasn’t anything like a homily—more like a poetry slam, really. But I try not to let things get too predictable in church!
For Those Working with Struggling Churches
It’s a burden, isn’t it? It’s hard not to feel like a failure, when your church is struggling and you don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. You know that you shouldn’t feel that way; you know you shouldn’t feel responsible for saving the church. You tell yourself that your people already have a savior, and it isn’t supposed to be you. But still.
This is a presentation I made for the 2021 spring meeting of the Prairie Association of the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ. It’s about eighteen minutes of prayer, song, and reflection, written especially for those working with struggling churches.
How to Feel Beautiful
Hello friends! Today I’m feeling hopeful about spring: here in north-central Illinois, we’re having temperatures in the mid fifties. This morning, I saw my first two red-winged blackbirds of the season—and then my first two robins!
I’ve been working on a new project, putting short sermons online for my church, the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, IL. Here’s one with a valuable tip: how to feel beautiful. (Because you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!)
[vimeo id=394788470]
Best blessings!
Call to Change: A Ninefold Repentance
Hello, Merry Mystics! I preached a sermon last Sunday that I’d like to share with you. Our text was Matthew 4:12-23, which is the story of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the calling of his first disciples. That text got me thinking about change: how much I hate it, and how much the church needs it.
The video from the church didn’t turn out so well, so I’ve made a new one for you:
[youtube id=RNil3N5b1Cg]
Here’s that ninefold repentance, in case you’d like to put it up on your door:
- Repent of teaching that Jesus’ life was a sacrificial offering, required to appease an angry God.
- Repent of valuing right belief more than right action, and creeds more than kindness.
- Repent of slandering God as a punisher who sends sinners to an eternity in hell.
- Repent of stubbornly insisting that the world is about to come to an end.
- Repent of our belief that God has a tribal bias—that God is more interested in us than in them.
- Repent of treating our guesses as dogmas, and our words as God’s words.
- Repent of our contempt for spiritual paths and religious traditions other than our own.
- Repent of treating scientific curiosity and skeptical investigation as threats to God.
- Repent of our indifference to the damage humankind has inflicted on the life of the earth.
God Is Not the Punisher
In my church last Sunday morning, our gospel reading was Matthew 3:1-12. It’s one of those Advent eye-openers. It’s not about good tidings of great joy, but about John the Baptizer’s apocalyptic threat: those who do not bear fruit worthy of repentance are about to be burned with unquenchable fire. Damn!
It seems like we always trip over that tension at Advent, which is partly about the delightful anticipation of Christmas, and partly about the terrifying threat of hell. But that tension isn’t unique to Advent; it’s at the core of the melodramatic way we’ve told our Christian story for centuries.
Here’s a short sermon about it. (Sneak preview: I don’t actually think God is going to burn anybody with unquenchable fire.)
[youtube id=UI1xlsuUe38]
The Center of the Circle
Hello, friends!
This one is by request. Fair warning: it’s a straight-up sermon, it’s serious, and it’s twenty minutes long. As you know, I am the pastor of the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, Illinois; this is what I did in church last Sunday. My text was the Good Samaritan parable from the Gospel of Luke.
[youtube id=8NABAFdJiEw]
About Aliens
I treasure the Bible—even though I don’t always agree with it—and it really gets under my skin when people misuse it, as Jeff Sessions and Sarah Sanders have been doing recently. The Bible has quite a lot to say about how we are supposed to treat aliens and strangers. And—spoiler alert!—it isn’t exactly the way our current administration is treating those poor souls fleeing to our country from the south…
[youtube id=oL8cDGnqv-k]
Apple Tree Lessons
Here are some lessons I learned from a friendly apple tree. I meant to do this episode of The Merry Mystic while sitting in a tree, but it just didn’t work out that way …
[youtube id=5_voRSXz4_E]
While we’re on the subject: do you know the children’s book The Giving Tree? Depending on your perspective, it’s either a parable about selfless giving, or a sad tale about an abusive relationship. For my part, it bothers me that the boy/man in the story takes everything the tree gives, killing the tree, and never even says thank you. But some people really love this book. What’s your take?