Rev. Don Erickson

Stevie Wonder's classic "Sir Duke" is not only a great song (that horn section!), it also includes the makings of a great playlist. This episode creates such a playlist.

Music for some reaches the level of spiritual experience and practice. Rev DJ Don discusses this beautiful phenomenon. Featuring music by Stevie Wonder, 10,000 Maniacs, and Elgar.

Dr. Paul Dixon, the president of Cedarville University, the Christian college Holly and I attended in the early 1990’s, regularly preached during our mandatory, weekday chapels. He spoke with a Midwestern drawl that gave the effect of a folksy, down-home preacher.   He was once an Evangelist, and you certainly heard that urgency in his chapel messages. By the way, he was a white dude, in his 50’s... like me. During his chapel messages, he’d often lead the students in an acapella singing of a Black Spiritual. Amazingly, I was able to find online an example of a Cedarville College chapel service led by Paul Dixon where we sang that spiritual. This is from March 30, 1992: Holly and I were there! It’s kind of neat to think that among those voices singing that Spiritual some 30 years ago were Holly and my voices. Hers was much better, of course. That chapel rendition is good, I’d say. But it lacks a certain spirit that comes with Spiritual tradition. Here’s what I mean… There’...

I heard it tear as I shoveled. I am not sure how or what movement caused it to tear. And as it turned out, what tore wasn’t essential, ruinous, or irreparable. But it did scare me initially out there in the cold, huffing and puffing as I threw snow into piles on either side of our driveway. The torn flap of my beloved coat’s front pocket, it fortunately came right off, without ruining the foundation of the coat. For symmetry’s sake, I took off the other pocket flap. Maybe you, the reader, got stuck on "beloved coat." No, unlike Dolly Parton’s coat of many colors, my mother did not make it for me. But there is a memorable if unexciting origin story behind the coat. Maybe the better term is ownership story and not origin story. The story is not about the coat's creation. I'd love to know that origin story - who made it, where, etc. - but never will. The story I share is one involving how I first came to own the coat. I was in Seoul in the early Spring of 2001 with Holly...

Yesterday, I get a text from Corey during the school day. He texted, "I am scared." Why? Because there was a kid at school who was accused of having a knife in his bag. This caused a big stir, naturally. Teachers were checking his bag. The school police officer was called. The kid was removed from the class and the class put on lockdown. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, and the school did the right things. But as we sadly know in America, it easily could have been the real thing, and gone a very different way. And it could have been a gun instead of a knife. Our kids know this. That is why Corey's text read, "I am scared." After all, they do lockdown drills in the case of an active shooter. Read that last sentence! Our kids practice going into lockdown in the case of an active shooter. Seeing those words, "I am scared" - it immediately shook me. As a parent, like thousands of parents across the country, there is fear in me in sending my kid off to sch...

This week I’d like to focus on a couple things – the demographics and the faith practices of the United Church of Christ. To do this, I’d like to compare the UCC to a similarly sized denomination that is distinctly Evangelical in nature as well as distinctive altogether, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of America (SDA). One reason why it is distinctive altogether is the fact that it’s Sabbath and day for Worship is Saturday. Another distinctive feature of the SDA is that most of its adherents practice vegetarianism. According to the 2015 American Religious Landscape Survey, the SDA, along with non-denominationalists and Pentecostals, were the only 3 Christian groups that saw growth between 2007 and 2014. So, the SDA is doing something right. That said, juxtaposing the UCC next to the SDA helps us have a helpful frame of reference. This is, as mentioned especially so when UCC and SDA are similar in size.   I’d like to begin by considering the age range of the SDA and UCC. S...

Covid-19 – it changed everything. Or did it? In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. To see the similarities and differences between pre-Covid and amid-Covid church life, we must first go back to the years before Covid. What were sociologists, researchers, and church-people telling us? A couple huge surveys measuring religion in America painted a grave picture of church life in the few years before Covid. All in all, things were not looking so good for institutional churches. The Religious Landscape Survey put out by Pew Research Center in 2014 and the American Values Atlas put out by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in 2016 both agreed that religion in America had shifted in major ways. The number of Christians in America was steeply declining. The number of religiously unaffiliated Americans was steeply rising. PRRI indicated that in 2016, 69% of Americans were affiliated with some form of Christianity. In 1976, it was 87%. What made up the difference, mostly those who clai...