Ryan Robinson's Blog: Anabaptist Redux

This sermon was from May 6, 2018, continuing a series going through the Mennonite Confession of Faith.

Readings: Confession of Faith article 4; 2 Timothy 3:14-17

Intro: An Embarrassing Book

When Ann introduced this confession of faith series back in January, she mentioned how she was embarrassed by some parts of the confession of faith [Ann helped write it and spoke about that experience]. All I could think about at the time was “crap, I just signed up to talk about the Bible.” If the confess...

The following is my transcript from a result sermon. It was the third in a series walking through Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, with this one covering Article 2: Jesus Christ. It has only been lightly edited to remove a couple names from our congregation, add an embedded video, and generally change to more web-friendly formatting.

Intro (2 min)

A couple of years ago, Emily and I had some friends over in our apartment. All of us were Christians, but with a variety of traditio...

I’m not really going out of my way to blog anymore with life pretty hectic, but I realized I should share a modified sermon I gave a months ago. There was another section that went further into atonement, but in my opinion it didn’t work very well, cramming too much into the last 5 minutes of a 20 minute sermon, so I cut that out here.

The Texts

Amos 5:18-24

Matthew 23

The Question

When I was younger, I wondered why Jesus was killed. I grew up in a moderate evangelical church, so I was given...

The following was written for a MennoNerds vlog.

This is probably my favourite photo I’ve ever taken. It was during a thunderstorm last summer with an amazing purple sky, looking out from our balcony. In the centre of the shot is the cross at the top of the Lutheran church right beside our apartment building.

I’m not particularly artistic, but I couldn’t help but see some meaning here in the way this photo turned out, a message that seems particularly strong during Lent.

We have this incre...

During January of each year, our church brings in a biblical scholar to teach through a book. This year is Matthew. In the first adult Bible Study last week,Tom Yoder Neufeld covered many introductory topics, including his explanation of the layers that go into each Gospel: Jesus, the oral history, the compiler, and so on. He also talked about how there was an effort in the early church to compile into one Gospel, which was soundly rejected. That left me thinking: Why? If the goal is strictly...

Over on the MennoNerds vlog, I introduced a new topic about movies and TV. My script is below, or go and watch it on YouTube:

Hi MennoNerds vloggers,

Way back when we started this vlog, we talked about the value of stories, as well as more specifically about books. Stating propositions is rarely as effective as helping people relate through stories. The Bible is a great example of this. That doesn’t mean there aren’t facts involved in the Bible, but it isn’t a systematic theology textbook. I...

I just came across this fantastic TED talk below (seriously, I need to check TED more often – there’s always something good).

I can’t help but wonder about implications for the Church. It’s well-established that trust in the institutional Church has declined dramatically, as with other institutions. In some ways this breaking of trust is well-deserved when those institutions have failed to live up to the trust put into them. In other ways, there isn’t necessarily a fault involved – just an u...

When our local church gathering ended this week, Emily turned to me and said she was hungry. Maybe that’s not that strange – our church ends about 12:15, just in time for lunch, but it’s not particularly normal for either of us. I theorized that the piece of bread for communion may have had an appetizer effect, telling our bodies it is time to eat and making us hungry.

Later in the day, the analogy kept hanging around in my head. Maybe it’s not that deep of a thought and really it isn’t much...

This is the first photo of Walden I shared on Facebook.

Our cat Walden passed awaylast night. We had him for just over 2 years – it was only a few days earlier that Facebook reminded me of the first picture of him I shared the day after we got him, the same one I included here to the right. Like any pet, he could be annoying sometimes, but there was no question our lives were better with him. He was a gorgeous cat, very soft, and had a very loud purr when he was happy – which was often. He wa...

A few years ago I was strongly considering writing a book. My premise was essentially a systematic theology but starting with the idea that God looks like Jesus, particularly when it comes to rejection of violence.The Atonement of Godby J.D. Myers is the closest I’ve encountered to trying for the same goal, with a couple of significant differences:

It is not nearly as comprehensive as a systematic theology, sticking to topics that are directly related to a non-violent understanding of the at...