Randall J. Greene

Words, if you look at them, are a binary of black and white, ink on a page. But when we listen to them, when we see them for what they mean, they shine.

Continually I find myself unable to capture the details in my imagination as words on a page. It's an awful cycle. I love it.

I was fortunate to have three grandpas in my life. It’s strange having all three of them gone. An entire generation of men in my lineage has passed. I feel the weight of it, as if a mantle has been passed to my father, and the mantle he wore has been passed to me.

Despite what Paul says, I don’t think God desires us to be slaves of God.

When I asked ChatGPT to write a sonnet about socks, it did! And a surprisingly coherent one, too. But then I wanted to see if I could take what it created and turn it into something new.

Yesterday I said I was starting something new: a “web log” or “blog” for short. That was a joke, because blogs have been around for a long time now. What I actually mean is that I’m going back to something old.

So here I am. It’s the second day of January. I’m starting something new. I’m calling it a “web log” or “blog” for short. (It's okay to laugh, that was a joke.)

A very short story about a man longing to return to his past.

A verse reflecting on myself and the things most important to me.

I want to tell stories of majesty and grandeur, but it's far more important to me that my stories be honest, true, and those majestic stories aren't mine to share.

When people criticize the idea of online church, they often talk about how online worship services feel disembodied, disconnected from the physical experience of community. Is there another, better way for us to think about online church?

We, the body of Christ, cannot content ourselves to sit back and watch as these new media become the message without us; the world needs God’s story of hope and humanity to be woven into the fabric of its life, everywhere that life is found.

Part of the challenges to doing church online is in actively managing conflict, protecting privacy, encouraging participation in local communities, and gather together in-person as a church body for sacraments and celebrations.

Church culture is dramatically different than what we see happening on social media, and members entering an online church for the first time will bring their assumptions about social media into this new context. How might we bring people into this posture of cruciformity and reconciliation, when that posture is so foreign to today’s online experiences?

How can we translate Paul's concept of the church into an online context? How can we match his understanding of community, mission, and service with the technological tools and resources we have available to us today?

Let us consider how Paul structured worship and leadership in the Corinthian church, as well as how he handled conflict within the church body to maintain growth and faithfulness.

Paul's leadership and communication with the church in Corinth in the first century provides a basic framework that we can use to explore the application of an online church today.

If you ask almost any social media user today, they will tell you that the incredible potential of social media is often not fully realized—sometimes as a result of the nature of the medium itself, and sometimes as a result of the way we use it. In this post, we will examine some of the difficult realities of social media in our society today.

The emerging technologies of online connection are powerful tools. But to what extent does social media provide incredible opportunities, and to what extent does it hurt our real life communities?

Since the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, many churches have begun streaming their worship services online. But what would it look like for us to actually engage our communities in online community? Is this even something we should be talking about?

The words "Manifest Destiny" aren't just a couple of inspirational words put together by the White House to sound nice. It refers to a very specific ideology from our nation's history, and it's not one we should celebrate.

This blog post is a confession as much as it is a reflection. I've learned a lot about antiracism, and I have a lot left to learn.

Shortly after our foster daughter came to live with us, one of my friends asked, “How should I refer to her? As your daughter, or as your foster daughter?” I'm learning that the answer isn’t quite that straightforward.

Centrists and moderates often have a bad reputation. They’re often accused of not really taking a position on today’s most important issues. I’m not here to defend centrists today. But I wonder if this entire conversation might be missing the point.