Tyler Braun's Blog, page 11

Called Out Episode 001: Anxiety

Studies show 40 million Americans struggle with some form of anxiety, yet when it comes to an issue so many feel burdened by the church is largely silent.

I’m excited to share with you the first full-length episode of Called Out, my new podcast. Today’s episode is on the subject of anxiety, and was really the inspiration behind starting a podcast. The podcast medium is great for telling stories and because anxiety is an often ignored subject, I thought telling the stories of people who have...

A Church For the City

This past Sunday marked 5 years of my family and me being at New Harvest Church. Time flies, truly.

For the better part of this summer I’ve thought about what I’d like to say to in some ways commemorate the 5 years of calling Salem and New Harvest home. In many ways I was asking God and myself the question, “what kind of church does God want New Harvest to be?” As the summer wore on I kept coming back to the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself,” which is first recorded in Leviticus 19.

In...

A Meaningless Life

One of my great fears in life is to master work that doesn’t matter. It’s why I came to a point of crisis only a few months after graduating college—”Did I just waste my time for 4 years and a lot of debt?”

I’ve been reading the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the most interesting books in Bible, in part because it makes very little mention of God. Here’s a short piece of chapter 2:

“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
a...

Announcing My New Podcast: Called Out

I’ve been an avid podcast listener for over 5 years now. While I still love blogging, I’ve come to value the podcast medium for its ability to tell stories in powerful ways. Podcasts allow for meaningful conversation and storytelling in ways other written-word mediums do not.

With that in mind, I’m happy to announce that I’m launching Called Out: a podcast equipping the church to navigate the tension between its brokenness and healing power.

You can listen to the introduction episode (click...

A Follow-Up to Yesterday’s Post

As I somewhat expected, the reaction to my post published yesterday was strong, from various perspectives. Love, hate, etc. I’m grateful for friends and connections who were comfortable enough to share their honest feedback with me. Rather than rehash my thinking and my possible errors I wanted to show you a conversation I had with a pastor after he read my post and contacted me. This follows below.

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Tyler-

I usually love your posts/articles, and have quoted them in my messages.  This post i...

Are White Supremacists Really That Different From White Evangelicals?

After the events of Charlottesville and the near-universal repudiation of the march and actions of the group encompassing white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, I found myself wondering how this group here generally referred to as white supremacists are different (or not) from how white evangelicals (of which I am one) are perceived. 

White supremacists march and protest and threaten violence due to the removal of confederate flags and statues.

White evangel...

Bypassing Prayer for Action (God Isn’t Fixing This)

God Isn’t Fixing This.

That’s the headline from the Daily News in response to the shooting in San Bernadino 2 years ago. The cover includes a few tweets from Republicans leaders at the time, with emphasis added on the prayers they declared to offer. In the wake of tragedy everyone wants to offer thoughts and prayers. It’s the one thing we can do because tragic headline news makes us feel helpless against evil things.

This past weekend a 5 year-old boy drowned in the river not far from my hou...

Fast Food Faith

Last week I drove by a McDonald’s at 5:30pm only to find a drive thru line over 10 cars deep, wrapping all the way around the restaurant into the surrounding parking lot. I said to the people in the car with me, “People still eat at McDonald’s?!?” Ignorance is bliss I guess. I certainly don’t eat the healthiest, but I do draw the line at fast food. Oh, and I rarely use the drive thru (though that may have more to do with my power window being broken than some ideological position on drive thr...

Valuing the Ignored Virtue of Charity

The Catholic tradition has long emphasized charity as a needed virtue in those who would follow Christ. They not only recognize charity as financial generosity, but also in the love of man toward God, and in the love of neighbor. But who is your neighbor? Is it only the person you live directly next to? Jesus says who your neighbor is must be seen as far more expansive.

To truly love your neighbor the way Jesus envisions is to love your enemy—whether this enemy is philosophical, physical, or...

What I’ve Learned About Navigating Difficult Choices

I recognize that at the age of 32 I am nowhere near being an expert at navigating difficult choices. In fact, you should probably stop reading this because I’ll have a whole new set of items for navigating difficult choices in another 10 years after making a myriad of mistakes between now and then.

Some of the biggest decisions I’ve made—whether to move to a new church or whether to buy a home—were the culmination of years of continued processing from various angles. I tend to make decisions...