My Talks page provides access to various lectures, sermons, and other sorts of publicly available messages I have given over the years. I hope that you will find something interesting, informative, and spiritually challenging as you listen. Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to dwell here for a while.
- As often as we can afford it, Terry and I travel to Israel/Palestine in order to live with friends in the Aida refugee camp, located on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Our main focus involves
volunteer work in a local, Palestinian community center. I have also done educational research when I was teaching at Calvin College. We always try to document and participate in some of the local protests against the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian communities.
In the summer of 2014, our stay coincided with the tragic kidnapping and murder of three Israel, Jewish teenagers. We witnessed some of the effects of Operation Brother’s Keeper, the Israeli military response to the kidnappings, an exercise in massive, indiscriminate collective punishment throughout the West Bank.
I gave this talk, complete with illustrative Power Point slides and video, at Calvin College in February, 2015. The MC introduces me at the 5:48 minute mark. I begin to speak at 9:15.
- In connection with the publication of my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom
Citizenship in 21st-Century America, I had the opportunity to speak at the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics. My talk was a more extensive development of themes I touch on briefly in I Pledge Allegiance. The title was, “Kingdom Mistakes and Their Consequences: From Abraham Kuyper to the Religious Right.”
In both my book and this talk, I attempt to correct an all-to-common misunderstanding about the kingdom of God — a misunderstanding shared across the entire theological spectrum — that leads to popular misconceptions about “kingdom work” and how Christians can contribute to the growth of God’s kingdom. 
Here, I specifically address the cultural mandate focus popularized by the Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, and his followers known as neo-Calvinists.
HINT: as important as social justice work and efforts at “cultural transformation” may be, they don’t necessarily build God’s kingdom.
- “Seek First the Kingdom of God” is a Sunday morning message that focuses on Jesus’ command in Matthew 6:33, “Seek the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness first, and all these other things (i.e. food and clothing) will be added to you, as well.”
After explaining what Jesus meant by these words, I ask the question, “What might it mean for followers of Jesus to live, first and foremost, for God’s kingdom in the United States of America, the greatest purveyor of death, violence and destruction in the world today?”