Tod Bolsinger

I"ll get by with a little help from my friends...

Thanks to all of you who have cruised through this site after hitting the links at Mark Roberts' and Hugh Hewitt's sites. Those guys are the real deal and their sites are must reading for many, many people. All this goes to show how right John Donne was so very long ago. No man, nor blog, is an island... Check back later today for the next post in my Staying Put series...

On conversations...now where is that latte I put down?

Welcome again. In many ways, this blog is a way of expanding a conversation that many people are having these days about life, God and the church. I entered that conversation myself with a book last year. Which I have excerpted below:

I have always been jealous of the Inklings. I wish that I could have been part of that group of friends who met to talk about God, literature and life that included J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. I can only imagine how stimulating it would have been to be part of that ongoing conversation. I love conversation. And maybe because of that jealousy, I am trying to reproduce a coffee shop conversation in this book. It is the kind of conversation that my colleagues and I have in the afternoons when we need to get out of the church office for a few minutes. We’ll certainly talk about God and life, but we’ll do so by focusing on theology and the Church.
As a reader of this book, then let me welcome you to the conversation. Please consider sitting down with a cup of coffee, a pen to scribble in the margins and maybe partner or two to read along with. I intend this book for pastors and church leaders. It is also meant to be a frank and friendly argument with some writers whom I respect and enjoy.
In this conversation, I want to help move to the forefront of our thinking an ancient Biblical imperative. It hasn’t been rejected so much as ignored or forgotten. But it is critical nonetheless: As God is, so the Church should be. As God does, the Church should do. With the result being that the more the Church is like God, the more individual souls will become like Christ.

If you are interested in more of this kind of conversation, then let me encourage you to keep checking back here at this site, or consider getting a copy of my book, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives

You may also want to check out the good folks at the Emergent Village website. Some pretty interesting discussion is going on there as well.

What the heck I'm doing...

Welcome to my blog. Tis a new thing for me this blogging. I have many friends who do blog and I guess I just like the idea of contributing to an ongoing conversation about topics both whimsical and serious and always "soulish" (to borrow a phrase). Here's the deal. I will blog when I feel so moved, you feel free to read when you feel so moved. If you'd like to write me, feel free to send me an email at [email protected] . I will often refer to books and films, and fleeting thoughts (some of those books and thoughts are actually my own!) But mostly my intention is to continually muse upon the notion of the kind of life that God actually intended us all to have. Unlike some of my Christian friends (I am a pastor, y'know), I don't believe that life begins with death. God wants us to have a good, meaningful life of eternal significance and immeasurable contentment that begins here and now. Of course, that includes a fair bit of pain and some brutally honest confrontations with the brokenness of our souls and our world. But truth be told, I believe God has instilled each of us with a kind of holy nostalgia, a longing for a life we have only barely tasted but for which we have a deep aching hunger. Indeed, if you want to read a sermon on the subject. Click here