Weekly Compendium

Sep 10, 2022

I had the honor of preaching at my home church in Chicago last weekend. My homily is kind of a love story about how I came to be a Lutheran in that very church. Meant a lot to be there and I hope you get a good word out of it…

And here are the regular pastoral notes from earlier in the week…

Along the Way with Jonas Ellison

Daily Pastoral #10

Your daily affirmations - at least some of them - might be keeping parts of you alive that need to die. The false self needs fuel. It may behoove you to cut it off at the source. As Ever, JonasAlong the Way with Jonas Ellison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Jonas Ellison

Along the Way with Jonas Ellison

Daily Pastoral #11

One really good way - perhaps the only true way - to experience human joy is to submit to your rescue from the fruitless project of self. Oh, and yeah... This is what Jesus is obsessed with doing in you. P.S. “Self” is not your body - that’s God’s temple and it’s holy. “Self” is the impossibility of a “you” separate from God or other. It isn’t real, thu…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Jonas Ellison

Along the Way with Jonas Ellison

Daily Pastoral #12

Maybe the point of church isn’t to see what group can speak better Christianese and be more performatively pious than the other groups. That would be a religion of us (vs. them, of course). It would be a false, blasphemous religion. I think the aim of church is to sit next to each other in a room and point at how God’s grace is, was, and has always been …

2 years ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Jonas Ellison

Along the Way with Jonas Ellison

Daily Pastoral #13

The Gospel is the sweet song that disavows us of the heavy burden of false thinking that says we need to earn our belovedness. Belovedness cannot be earned because it can never be a form of payment. It is pure gift unearned and unloseable. Life feels a lot lighter now, right…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Jonas Ellison

Along the Way with Jonas Ellison

Daily Pastoral #14

There’s an impulse within you that wants to conserve what is good. It wants to hold onto that which holds you together. It longs for the safety of home and enjoys that old beat-up sweater every time you put it on. There’s another impulse within you that calls you forward into progression. It begs you to lay down the old stories and things that once serv…

2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Jonas Ellison

Weekly Compendium

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