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Year of Sundays

By Joel Gunz I’m a communion junkie. After leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who restrict their bread and wine to only a tiny fraction of their members, I’ve made it a point to receive the sacraments from any church that allows it. The partaking of the bread and wine, symbolizing at-one-ness with the Deity is both…

We had big plans to visit our local Mosque this evening, but unfortunately, having read our blog, they aren’t 100% sure they want us to come anymore. We’re in limbo waiting for their board to meet and make a decision. The sad thing is we were really looking at our visit as an opportunity to…

By Joel Gunz In 1940, the year France was trampled under the heel of Hitler’s army, Roger Schutz hopped on his bike and pedaled 90 miles west from neutral Geneva, Switzerland to the French town of Taizé. There he settled, adjacent to Nazi-occupied territory, to found a monastery dedicated to bringing spiritual healing to that…

Sunday turned out to be a rather rough Mother’s Day for me. I hate to admit this, but lately I’ve been finding myself navel-gazing weepily about how unfair it is that some of the hardest parenting work I’ve ever done will be the very work my children never appreciate. Basically, I was at my parental…

The first thing you should know about The Portland Pentecostals is that they are rabidly friendly to newcomers. Before we even found a pew, I’d shaken hands with no fewer than ten pentecostilians. Pentecostalites? Pentecostalonians? Oh. Pentecostals. Right. The second thing you should know is this was hands-down the most diverse church we’ve ever been…

I like to imagine that our blog readers are secretly jealous of us. While you go about your humdrum lives, sleeping in on Sundays and lingering over brunch and the Sunday Times, we’re like Stanley and Livingstone in the Congo, rising before dawn to throw our half-asleep children in the car for another trek into…

When I first heard about Easter Sunrise Service at the Cemetery, I was expecting something spectacular. I mean, why else would you haul ass out of bed at 5:30AM on a perfectly decent Sunday morning? I expected to see the sun rise over the magnificent city of Portland, Oregon.

Praise the lord! We dropped by the Portland Pentecostal church today for our weekly dose of shouting, speaking in tongues and wild gesticulating from the pastors. According to the Pentecostals, we are all fallen sinners who deeply need Jesus (and a screaming pastor) to save us from the fires of hell. Needless to say, that…

I am hard at work on a schedule for our year of Sundays, but it’s a work-in-progress. We have already decided to hit a Pentecostal Church this Sunday, but I can’t decide WHICH ONE! Help me choose! Joel is no help at all. Here are the options: 1. Emmanuel – “When God’s Spirit indwells a…

I can’t talk about going to Synagogue without talking about Rebecca Long, my grade school BFF. We were attached at the hip for a good chunk of our childhoods, which, in hindsight, makes her just as much a sister as a friend. I lost my virginity on the floor of Becca’s bedroom to a cute…
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