PlainSpeech Messages | Find YOUR way to GRACE.
I recently read a message I’d given in 1984 and felt a mixture of embarrassment and surprise. Embarrassed because it seems inadequate now, and surprised by how much my worldview has changed. Twenty-five years from now, I might read these messages and have a similar reaction. I offer no guarantee that my work or words will endure the eroding effects of time. I can only assure you these thoughts have been helpful to me, and perhaps a few others, today. With that qualification, I offer them to you.
~ Philip
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Christianity 101: Who Are We?
VIEW VIDEO I was up in Carmel last week giving a speech to a literary society for their spring banquet. It was a gorgeous spring day, so I drove there on the back roads, past farmers working their fields, with the redbuds and dogwoods in bloom and peonies popping up...
Christianity 101: The Holy Spirit
VIEW VIDEO I was at a weeklong conference up north about fifteen or so years ago. One morning after I spoke, I was chatting with folks, shaking hands, that kind of thing, when I was approached by three women, who asked if I would meet with them privately that...
Power and Character – Easter 2023 (Matthew 28:1-9)
VIEW VIDEO Americans are a curious lot. I was eating lunch at Frank’s Place this week. I go there for my continuing education. There is much to be learned by listening to the conversations around you. When I was there this week, I was eavesdropping on the table next...
Christianity 101: Does Jesus Save Us?
Back when I was 16, and the Catholics traded me to the Quakers for two draft picks yet to be announced, I had to learn a whole new way of doing church. Out went the male-only leadership and obeying them always, in came Quaker women on a mission from God and staying...
Christianity 101: How Jesus Became God and Why
VIEW VIDEO When I was a kid, we had two dogs and a cat claimed by my siblings. I kept telling my mother I wanted a pet of my very own, and she kept resisting, not wanting another to tend another pet. But then I contracted a serious illness that our family doctor,...
Christianity 101: What God Can’t Do
VIEW VIDEO When I was a kid there was this boy in my catechism class named Matt, who, though appearing human, was thought to be demonic. When Father McLaughlin at our Catholic Church gave a sermon in which he described the devil, everyone turned and looked at Matt....
Christianity 101: God
VIEW VIDEO I was talking with a young person this week who wants to be a doctor and I thought what a noble profession medicine is, how when you’re a doctor people respect your advice, because they know you’ve studied many years and passed a test confirming your...
Stuff I Want to Do Before I Croak: A Geezer’s Manifesto (12)
VIEW VIDEO Before I became your pastor some 23 years ago, back when I had hair and was full of the vigor of youth, I pastored Irvington Friends Meeting up in the city. The meeting was begun in the early 1950’s in the basement of a bank, then in 1957 built a lovely...
Stuff I Want to Do Before I Croak: A Geezer’s Manifesto (11)
VIEW VIDEO Our granddaughter Madeline, who’s in the second grade, has a schoolmate who wears an Apple watch, which his parents use to track his whereabouts. When I was a kid, your parents tracked you the old-fashioned way, mothers calling one another to rat you out....
Stuff I Want to Do Before I Croak: A Geezer’s Manifesto (10)
VIEW VIDEO The year I turned 21, the television show Cheers aired on NBC. I was working at Public Service Indiana and several of my co-workers wanted to take me to a bar. I had only been in one bar my entire life, the Green Lantern in Danville, when I was 8 or 9 and...