Check out my tees HERE. I’m growing my inventory all the time. And check out my art HERE.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
For those of you who might not get this inside joke, it’s a reference to U2’s new album No Line on the Horizon. I downloaded it from iTunes, and I’m enjoying it. The album cover art is inspiring to me. If you are familiar at all with my art, you might notice that the minimalist style is similar to mine. The title of the album too has a mystical ring to it, kind of like The Matrix’s, “There is no spoon!”.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
After years and years of serving communities, keeping the faith, and struggling through everything, the last thing I want to be is bitter, grumpy, sad, narrow-minded and hateful. I want to be happy, hopeful, gracious and loving. I don’t want to be sad so that after my life is over, people will jump to the conclusion that it was because of all my trials, my poor finances, my negative community experiences, my confrontations with other leaders, and my apparent lack of visible success. I don’t want others to conclude that I allowed all these to pull me down. I don’t want them to point to all those things and blame them for my sadness. The fault lies within me if I am not happy. If I can’t find reason to rejoice and be glad in all situations, then it is my fault and no one else’s. True, sometimes my sadness is completely justified and understandable. I am entitled to be sad. But I don’t want to just settle for that. I want my privileges too, my rights! And I have every right to be happy too. Sure, sadness, like a deep current, courses through my life. But the river itself is joy. That’s what I want to live by and be remembered for.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
I made a comment on one of my own previous blog posts that perhaps the narrow way isn’t so much a prescribed way to think and live, but the way of love and unity. I’ll be writing more on this later today. It seems to me that we’ve been required to love unconditionally as it has been shown to us. Instead, generally speaking, it seems that in the wake of our own reception of mercy, we go out into the world proclaiming who’s out and who’s in. In the afterglow of our own inclusion, we proceed to exclude others from community.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
What gets me so many times in talking with others who have left communities is that they felt they were expected to conform to a standard which in essence was intended to kill their personalities. Many people don’t see it as an invitation to new life but to no life. Often, it is uniqueness of character that expresses itself in unusual and radical ways that offend.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
