By Corey Fields We hear a lot about the declining influence of the church. Christians today, however, have a very urgent opportunity to provide what I believe can be the most powerful prophetic witness to some serious moral issues. This…
Christian stuff the world needs, part 1: Welcome the stranger
By Corey Fields We hear a lot about the declining influence of the church and decreased religious participation. I can’t help but think that this has been partially self-imposed by our tendency to let issues of individual morality and other…
Home field advantage
By Corey Fields We recently visited my wife’s family. Up where they live, you watch a lot of Yankees baseball. At one point they were playing a series against the Rangers in Texas. In one of these away games, the…
A humble plea: Go easy on your pastor
By Corey Fields I recently attended a retreat for pastors. The facilitator led us through times of worship and discussion about Sabbath-keeping and self-care. The need for this is pretty well documented. The statistics tag pastors with poor physical and…
The role of a ‘declining’ church
By Corey Fields It has been interesting to watch the buzz over the recent Pew study looking at religious affiliation between 2007 and 2014. Although I’m very thankful to Pew for their incredible work in pulling together the hard data,…
Beyond the thumbnail image
By Corey Fields On social media, posts always get better engagement when there is a thumbnail image to go with it. Ours is a distracted and fast-paced society, and the speed at which we scroll through Facebook may be indicative…
What ‘religious freedom’ used to mean
By Corey Fields At the turn of the 17th century, an English lawyer named Thomas Helwys had become part of a separatist congregation in Lincolnshire (it is to this congregation that many Baptists trace their roots). They were dissenters from…
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday … What’s Saturday?
Maundy Thursday. “Maundy” is derived from the first word of John 13:34 in Latin: ” Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem.” “A new command I give you: Love one another. As…
When boundaries don’t behave
By Corey Fields I have a childhood memory of driving with my family across state lines and, in bewilderment, asking my mother where the line was. That may have been my first introduction to the arbitrary and human-made nature of…
The forgotten art of living together
By Corey Fields When two women who had spent years serving the community decided to start a new venture in Topeka’s poorest neighborhood, they knew they were going into a place plagued by crime, dysfunction and poverty. There was one…
Beyond belief
By Corey Fields Last month, former Seventh-day Adventist pastor Ryan Bell (not to be confused with Rob Bell) dropped the bombshell: he doesn’t believe in God anymore. His story has hit national media outlets such as NPR and the Huffington…
Christmas wasn’t Scrooge’s problem
By Corey Fields I love Charles Dickens’ 1843 story A Christmas Carol. A few people in my congregation like to tease me because I can’t get through an Advent season without using it as a sermon illustration. It was a…