writings and blogging reflections as they come to me. opinions are strictly my own.
Blog / Writings
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Originally Published In Touchstone: Theology Shaping Witness June 2025 The Great Methodist Dumpster Salvage For me, the great dumpster salvage began one afternoon when there was no one around. I surreptitiously entered the abandoned church library in a building that had, until recently, housed a once-strong United Church of Canada congregation. Knox-Wesley United[1] was the…
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The good folks at the Clowns of God ‘zine recently asked me to be interviewed for their upcoming Advent issue. Here’s what I said: Tell us about yourself! What do you spend your time doing? I’m Rob Shearer – I guess I’m a bit of a walking contradiction of being a proudly nonviolent anti-fascist anarchist…
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who gets to be more entitled? I first noticed the word being used well over a decade ago. Back then, I heard it too-often directed by older, senior management-types toward younger folks in organizations that I’ve been employed by. Entitled. These younger folk were often characterised by their elders as wanting some kind of special…
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This is a bit of a paper / presentation I wrote as part of my entry into the United Church of Canada outlining the history of radicalism (as opposed to progressivism or liberalism) in the United Church. Here’s a link to the pdf of the presentation.
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this letter was posted by Sarah Provan (scroll down on linke to see bio) a young(er) person who works in youth ministry in the United Church on Vancouver Island and across BC/Yukon. Her letter was shared to social media in September 2025. I share it here, with her permission – with my response to follow…
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A version of this piece originally appeared in 2023 in Creating Conversation – a weekly editorial, curated by the Centre for Missional Leadership (CML), Years ago, a Buddhist friend of mind told me about Buddhist death meditation, the practice of imagining one’s own death – step-by-step – which includes spending extended times on nine fairly descriptive (and…
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This was originally posted in 2023 on the AbbeyChurch blog. For some more images of these Abbeys that I took, please see the gallery on their website here. The pretense for this trip is that I’m turning 50 in about a month. I have long been an admirer of the witness of traditional monastic communities –…
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Some thoughts on proclamation (and more specifically, preaching) from my journey across various Christian traditions which originally appeared at the AbbeyChurch blog One important and beautiful part of my sojourn through the various traditions of Christianity was with the Roman Catholic Church. At the time, I can remember saying to a United Church of Canada…
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This reflection / blog post first appeared on the AbbeyChurch blog in summer 2025. Some call it “The Holy Eucharist” – others, “Communion” – and yet others “The Lord’s Supper”. Eucharist. It literally means thanksgiving (in Koine Greek) – and, depending on which stripe of Christianity one favours, one might lean into viewing it as a memorial,…
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The following is a paper I wrote in seminary in 2017 for professor Ray Aldred. A trigger warning that the colonial practices and language of 19th century Methodist missionaries are contained in this writing. For my first paper for this course, I explored the practice of the potlatch, particularly as it was practiced in First…