All posts tagged Peri Zahnd

  • The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: A Summary by Peri Zahnd

    The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: A Summary by Peri Zahnd

    I finished a book I’ve been promising myself I’d read for three years — when Covid lockdown hit I decided I had time. And it still took me three months of sporadic reading. I had to read it slowly so that it could seep into me — I took weeks-long breaks. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider, an academic book by a Harvard trained PhD, professor emeritus of church history and mission at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. It was an academic book, so it was exhaustingly comprehensive and tedious at times and certainly not for everyone. Brian first read it three years ago and loved it. There are lots of books he reads and loves I know I’ll never touch, and visa versa. But the title so intrigued me and I mused on it often. A patient ferment. A little leaven that slowly makes the bread rise, expand, grow, mature. Water turned to wine. How did the early church end up changing the world?
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  • Water To Wine Gathering

    Water to Wine Gathering 1024x1024

    Two years ago I published Water To Wine — a memoir of my spiritual journey out of Americanized pop Christianity into a deeper, richer, more substantive Christian faith. This journey was both the best and most difficult thing I’ve done in over forty years of following Jesus. I describe it as being “born again again” and use the metaphor of water turning to wine. (You can read more about my water to wine journey in this blog post: Twenty-Two Days.)

    I’ve honestly been surprised at how much interest there’s been in the story of my spiritual/theological transition. I think part of the interest is that I did it as a pastor while attempting to bring my congregation with me — a risky endeavor that I more or less succeeded in doing (though not without considerable cost and pain).

    Since the publication of Water To Wine I’ve received messages from hundreds of pastors and Christian leaders from across America and from a dozen or more countries who personally resonate with my story. I find that so gratifying. These days I typically receive three or four of messages a week from pastors who are on what I call “the journey.” Many ask to come visit me and I always say yes, even though it can be a challenge to find the time. A few have even moved to St. Joseph to be a part of Word of Life. I find that so amazing!

    Last fall after meeting with a pastor from Texas, I began thinking about hosting a gathering for people who are on their own “water to wine” journey; I want to tell these seekers what I wish someone had told me fourteen years ago. This will also be a great opportunity for people on the water to wine journey to connect with one another. When I floated the idea on social media, it generated an enthusiastic response.
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  • Every Scene By Heart

    Perigrino
    Peri in front of our albergue in Belorado, Spain

    Peri Zahnd has written a book about her experience on the Camino de Santiago that she and I walked last fall. The book is entitled Every Scene By Heart. It’s a beautifully written and deeply spiritual memoir that takes the reader on the five hundred mile journey with Peri. I’m thrilled to say that Every Scene By Heart is now available! And to help celebrate I would like to share some thoughts from the afterword Peri asked me to write for her enchanting book.

    Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
    I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast

    -Bob Dylan

    ESBH

    Afterword
    Brian Zahnd
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  • Lament and Laughter: Being Human

    plea-pray-lament-worship
    Peri has something important to say. –BZ

    Lament and Laughter: Being Human
    Peri Zahnd

    Last Thursday night at 9:30 I heard the sickening news of the police officers’ shooting in Dallas. I was tired and getting ready to go to bed, but then of course I couldn’t go to bed. The story was happening live and it was devastating. I finally went to bed at midnight, and laid there with a pain in my sternum, and the thought kept going through my mind, “I can’t breathe.” Which made me think of Eric Garner, the black man in New York who was killed by police, captured on video saying, “I can’t breathe.” The words echo in my mind, I feel them in my body. Lord, how can anybody breathe? What’s happening to this country?

    The next day I made myself watch the videos of the deaths of two black men killed a few days earlier in police altercations. Yes, I was very aware, and not at all callous — I just couldn’t make myself watch before. I am so sad about all this. It hurts. But I made myself watch. God, it was awful. The girlfriend of one calmly narrating as she watched her boyfriend die, and as we also watched him die. He was guilty of driving with a burned-out taillight. A nervous cop “jumped the gun.” Literally. Filled him full of bullets. It could never have happened to me. I’m a privileged white woman. The other man in a wrestling match with a cop, and then the cop pulling his gun and shooting the man in the chest multiple times. What on earth? How have we come to this. Yes, the two black men were also guilty of carrying guns, which was perfectly legal!!! Insanely legal. They died for nothing. And now five innocent white policemen are dead at the hands of an enraged, mentally ill black man, who, of course, is also now dead. It’s the casualties of a war we never wanted to be fighting.
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  • A Christian Perspective On the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

    Jerusalem

    Here’s a guest post from Peri. -BZ

    A Christian Perspective On the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
    by Peri Zahnd

    There can’t be a holier place than the Holy Land, can there? We first visited the land of the Bible nearly twenty years ago, and it was a life-changing trip, 1996. Brian and I had gone on a Christian pilgrimage trip while we were in the midst of building our sanctuary and church building here at Word of Life. This building program that had stretched on for nearly two years had turned into a nightmare. We had given all our savings to the building program, and could never have even considered the trip if complete strangers had not arranged to have our way fully paid.

    The trip was a surprise gift that came right out of heaven, a chance for a true rest from the relentless stress. From the very first day we were somehow able to forget everything we had left behind. (Even our three boys!) We both went asking God to speak to us and renew our hope — to do something special for us. And he did. I remember walking through the woods of the northern Galilee to an archaeological site that was being excavated — the ruins of the ancient city of Dan, the northernmost point of the land to which Abraham had been called. Archaeologists had found the gate, the four thousand year old gate of that ancient walled city and had exposed it to view. I stood in awe, looking right at the very stones that the Patriarch Abraham had walked on when he first set foot in the land of the Canaanites, the Promised Land.

    Something deep inside me shifted when I saw that gate. My perspective changed. I had always believed in Abraham, I believed the Bible, I believed it was possible to walk by faith and do by the help of God what we could not accomplish on our own. But when I saw that gate, I somehow knew it more deeply than ever before. Four thousand years ago, a man had heard the voice of God deep in his soul, and in obedience to that voice had somehow taken the world to a new place. Much more than the astronaut Neil Armstrong, his was “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The ability to know and interact with God in a new way, the way of faith. The man Abraham emerged from the pages of a book and I perceived his humanity, that he was subject to the same limitations as I was but somehow transcended them. He was real. And he lived and walked by faith. Abraham, by faith, did what he was called to do, and somehow, by faith, Brian and I would do what we were called to do. Brian had his own moment of divine connection on the trip. That’s his story, not mine to tell here, but the bottom line was that we would return back home and finish this building to the glory of God. We left with a resurrected hope that we would and could walk with God, and God would help us. And we did, and He did. So help me God!
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  • You Can Have It All?

    Because I was speaking to a gathering of pastors yesterday my Thinking Day is making an unusual Tuesday appearance. Perhaps I can think a little bit online.

    Saturday morning I saw some Christian television (I was on my way to ESPN College Game Day and came across it. Strange how I feel the need to qualify why I was watching Christian television). Anyway, the star of the show was promoting a new sermon series, “You Can Have It All.” Included in the package was a book entitled, How To Be A Millionaire God’s Way. Whatever.

    A little bit later I remarked to Peri, “Did you know you can have it all?”

    She replied, “What, my empire of dirt?”
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