Ash Wednesday doesn’t stand alone. It’s a gateway to the season of Lent, which is in itself a way of understanding the whole of the gospel story.
Why ministers shouldn’t walk away from social media
Ministers may not like the present reality of how people communicate, but it is the present reality. If we opt out of social media, we remove our voices from the conversation and fail to be informed about what others are doing and saying.
3 words for the church in 2019: ‘we were wrong’
If the church of Jesus Christ is to be relevant in our mission, if we are to be agents of God’s reconciling love, we’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror. And in God’s grace to muster the courage to say we were wrong.
Preaching the ‘red letters’ often makes congregations red in the face
The next time you think your pastor is being “too political” or “not evangelistic enough” or should “preach the gospel more,” give yourself a simple test: How does what your pastor preaches line up with the words of Jesus?
Why being transgender is not a sin
Transgender identity is about who a person is. It’s not about who they love or what actions they take that might be sinful in the sense that we all sin. It is about their fundamental being as humans created by God in God’s image – an image that God has declared to be good.
A memo from 1968 to today’s Christian parents: Teach your children well
One of the greatest blind spots of white privilege is the ability not to talk with your children about critical issues of the day, to “protect” them from reality. Black parents, Hispanic parents, poor parents, immigrant parents don’t have this privilege.
A tattoo that says, ‘Your story is not over’
The struggle is to welcome life as it is now, which is certainly different than you thought it would be or should be. The struggle is to see injury and illness and despair as a semicolon and not a period.
What is the Spirit saying about female and LGBTQ clergy?
Perhaps it’s time to connect the dots and try to puzzle out what God’s Spirit is painting among us.
What the church could learn from ABC
It is possible — even essential — to take a stand against things that are morally wrong without taking sides between Republicans and Democrats. We are currently hamstrung by the myth that to work against things like racism and sexism and mistreatment of refugees is to take sides on politics. There are some things to which there are not two sides.