Seth Pierce associate professor of communication at Union College in Lincoln, Neb. Formerly wrote as lead pastor of the Puyallup Church in the Washington Conference. By Seth Pierce Testing Without the Stressing As I write this latest installment of my monthly column, I am embarked on preparations for my Ph.D. qualifying exams this fall. This means my brain is overloaded with random bits of information pertaining to Husserl’s phenomenology, Derrida’s crit... Read more Soul Winning I like winning. I feel fairly confident that everyone does, since it is a rare thing to find someone who enjoys losing — at least in the general sense. Read more Whataboutism Several years ago, I preached a sermon on grace at one of our colleges. After the message a concerned student approached me and said, "I really appreciated your talk on grace. But, if time would allow, you'd share more about the law, right?" Read more Rage Flu When Billy Graham’s death made it onto social media, I sifted through a variety of passionate responses — not all of them pleasant. While some praised the evangelist’s incredible legacy of preaching the gospel, others criticized his comments on Je... Read more Follow the Dog Recently I bore the crushing burden of a stopover in Fiji after preaching for a camp meeting in New Zealand. More specifically, I spent two days on the remote Mana Island — population 400. This doesn’t include the resort, which, due to the off-pea... Read more False Expectations There was an island where a few Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans lived in 1914. It was so remote that news arrived every 60 days. In September, when news finally came, they learned that for more than six weeks now English and French people had be... Read more Our Transcendent Brains Change is a dirty word for a lot of people — until they get stuck. Sometimes when we get stuck along the way in life, the time we spend in that stuck place can make us wonder if anything can get better. Recently I came across something that gave m... Read more Along Came a Spider, Part 2 Well, after our bake sale break last month, it is time to pick up where we left off in discussing the proliferation of false teachers running around the world and how it is they continue to be successful even among the smartest believers. Read more Breaking Bob: The $50,000 Bake Sale During my family vacation in California this summer, I received a text from my associate pastor informing me Bob, an outstanding long-time member of our church, wanted to have a bake sale the first day of school. Admittedly, I was reluctant, and, ... Read more Along Came a Spider, Part 1 Shortly after Angela, Madeline and I moved to Omaha, we experienced a season of horror in our new house. The otherwise pleasant parsonage housing our new little pastoral family took a turn for the worse one morning when I came down the basement st... Read more Pagination Previous page ‹‹ Page 2 Next page ››
Testing Without the Stressing As I write this latest installment of my monthly column, I am embarked on preparations for my Ph.D. qualifying exams this fall. This means my brain is overloaded with random bits of information pertaining to Husserl’s phenomenology, Derrida’s crit... Read more
Soul Winning I like winning. I feel fairly confident that everyone does, since it is a rare thing to find someone who enjoys losing — at least in the general sense. Read more
Whataboutism Several years ago, I preached a sermon on grace at one of our colleges. After the message a concerned student approached me and said, "I really appreciated your talk on grace. But, if time would allow, you'd share more about the law, right?" Read more
Rage Flu When Billy Graham’s death made it onto social media, I sifted through a variety of passionate responses — not all of them pleasant. While some praised the evangelist’s incredible legacy of preaching the gospel, others criticized his comments on Je... Read more
Follow the Dog Recently I bore the crushing burden of a stopover in Fiji after preaching for a camp meeting in New Zealand. More specifically, I spent two days on the remote Mana Island — population 400. This doesn’t include the resort, which, due to the off-pea... Read more
False Expectations There was an island where a few Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans lived in 1914. It was so remote that news arrived every 60 days. In September, when news finally came, they learned that for more than six weeks now English and French people had be... Read more
Our Transcendent Brains Change is a dirty word for a lot of people — until they get stuck. Sometimes when we get stuck along the way in life, the time we spend in that stuck place can make us wonder if anything can get better. Recently I came across something that gave m... Read more
Along Came a Spider, Part 2 Well, after our bake sale break last month, it is time to pick up where we left off in discussing the proliferation of false teachers running around the world and how it is they continue to be successful even among the smartest believers. Read more
Breaking Bob: The $50,000 Bake Sale During my family vacation in California this summer, I received a text from my associate pastor informing me Bob, an outstanding long-time member of our church, wanted to have a bake sale the first day of school. Admittedly, I was reluctant, and, ... Read more
Along Came a Spider, Part 1 Shortly after Angela, Madeline and I moved to Omaha, we experienced a season of horror in our new house. The otherwise pleasant parsonage housing our new little pastoral family took a turn for the worse one morning when I came down the basement st... Read more
