Maurice Broaddus's Blog, page 47

Church Planting and Mission Drift

I've had a front row seat watching a flurry of church plants plan, launch, and close. It may be my inner Pollyanna speaking,* a question that always struck me as curious that if several teams are going into the same area, and if we're all about unity, why couldn't they join in or join together?

I know, I know, the answer is manifold and cooperative church planting in the name of kingdom building is an ideal. There are fiscal realities (where they are getting their money from), those who are ...

A Lenten Meditation - Peter Rollins' The Prodigal Father

Peter Rollins book, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales, has been supplemented with seven new parables for Lent. In Pete's own words, this collection of original parables, "represents my own attempt to explore and testify to the impossible Event housed in faith. In that sense they are deeply personal and relative to my own life." With permission, I share one of the parables.

The Prodigal Father

There was once a rich and kindly father who lived with his two sons in a lav...

Loving Your Enemies … Sorta

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!" -Psalm 133:1

Blah, blah, blah. So I've been looking at the love your enemies passage trying to find loopholes (because, as you know, that's what Jesus would do. He was ALL about the letter of the law and not the spirit of it). I'm bouncing back and forth between verses like "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-28) and the expert in the law ...

The Thin Yellow Line

So BFF Jon and my co-editor, Jerry Gordon, were over for dinner. My boys, ever eager students of male bonding conversations, were in rapt attention as we discussed the simple rules to going to the bathroom (we're talking "away games"). Ultimately, this left them more confused than when I tried explaining race relations in this country. Plus, I'm not sure I knew all of the rules. Apparently there is as much ritual to this as a Japanese tea ceremony. Anyway, to wit…

The two most important r...

The Need to DO

"Knowing the correct password—saying 'Master, Master,' for instance— isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, 'Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? 'You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress...

House - "Broken" (Part II)

(continued from Part I of An End of Self Confession aka "Physician Heal Thyself")

"I'm out of plans." –House

Only after a terrible tragedy, House begins to realize how much deeper his emotional problems lie than a Vicodin addiction. This marked his final stage of fully bottoming out. To finally reach a place where he is tired of fighting, worn out by the struggle to do better, losing hope that you'll ever find wholeness or the light. Feeling broken, beyond repair, as if something is f...

House - "Broken" (Part I)

An End of Self Confession aka "Physician Heal Thyself"

From its debut, House M.D. has been a great show. It's medical mystery plays as in as formulaic a way as any episode of Law & Order or C.S.I. and on that level of procedural, it's been fine. But it has always been the character of Dr. Gregory House himself, played by Hugh Laurie (Black Adder) who makes the show remarkable. He's been a fascinating character study, a blend of arrogance, brilliance, charm, wit, and selfishness; a man in pa...

Ghost Writer – All I Need is a Flaming Bike

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I'm a vain person.

I'm either slowing coming to grips with this reality or am re-discovering the depths of this truth anew. Now, to be straight, part of "living the writer's life" is an act of ego and vanity. Ego to believe that something we've written ought (DEMANDS!) to be read by others and vain enough to want to see our name on our work. How many of us day dream about walking into a library or a book store and seeing our name on t...

Oh No She Di'int - Kelli Strikes Back ... Again (Mo*Con Updates)

Guest Blog by Kelli Owen

Maurice asked me to write a little something regarding Mo*Con. Or as it's being called this year, Kelli*Con. So let's start there. Why "Kelli*Con"? Well, let me tell you a story…

There are a variety of conventions for writers to choose from. There are the publishing cons, the writer cons, the genre cons and then there's Mo*Con. It's got panels, books for sale, writers and publishers to talk to and the icing on the cake—Maurice makes everyone steaks at 1am. Unlike other ...

A Couple New Story Sales

Because I can't just find a genre and stick to it (aka, why I'll probably never sell a short story collection), here are my latest story sales. First up, I have a story in an anthology of weird western stories entitled "Dead West:13 Tales of Murder and Mayhem" from Bandersnatch Books due out around Halloween 2010:


Jerrod Balzer - A Show of RageSteve Vernon - Border CrossingHunter Lambright - Things Worse Than GhostsDaniel I. Russell - Rainchild and the TricksterRick Hautala - Screaming...