It’s not ideal or lifegiving for anyone to be forced to choose between buying groceries for their family or paying toward a student loan. As many prepare for 2022, we will again be faced with this predicament, because we have…
Five ways to help your pastor this year
At the dawn of a new year, many churches are adopting new budgets and making plans for whatever will come in this third year of COVID-influenced ministry. There are lots of decisions to be made, and not always enough information…
How code-switching might explain why people aren’t coming back to church
In March 2020, my congregation had just begun to stabilize from the loss of about one-third of the congregation and staff after we voted to welcome LGBTQ believers into full membership. It had been a long, difficult and meaningful season…
12 cures for the hollow church
It’s been several years since the huge oak on the property of First Church came crashing down into the empty parking lot one Saturday night. A blast of straight-line winds proved more than the 250-year-old icon could withstand. The tree…
New Year’s resolutions when you can’t count on anything except COVID
I am an old-school calendar guy. While I do use an Outlook calendar, my default calendar is a monthly planner. I use a color-coding system to write events on the calendar and tasks on the “Notes” column on the side….
The birth of Abba’s Jesus
As we kneel at the manger to worship the infant who would be Savior of the world, let’s turn our minds to the God Jesus called Abba, the One whom theologian John Cobb called “Jesus’ Abba.” Abba was the Aramaic…
Reading BNG’s news this year made me think of the Antichrist
Many of us who read the outstanding articles that are published on the BNG website are perplexed by some of the newsworthy events of the past several years. Some events serve as sources of encouragement and comfort. However, too many…
A daughter’s tribute — 50 years later
My brother was 15 and I was 18 when our father died Dec. 4, 1971 — 20 days short of his 46th birthday. Initially it was thought he died of a heart attack; he’d been sick all that previous year….
Everything that’s wrong with the world explained in one brief column
We do love simplicity. We love the idea that complex issues can be distilled into easy sound bites, that nuanced conversations can be summarized as “he said/she said” and that internet memes and bumper stickers offer plenty of space to…
Four feet, two skates
I don’t think it was Christmastime. Too many years have passed for me to be sure. But I do remember it was cold outside. I was walking from the Stephen Center, the Christian diner operated as a ministry in Tirana,…
On abortion and guns: How is that American Christians can come to such different understandings of our faith?
On Dec. 10, the United States Supreme Court upheld Senate Bill 8, the Texas ban on abortions — not officially overturning Roe v. Wade, the court case legalizing abortion, but certainty sinking its future. On Dec. 1, I traveled with…
Let’s put Herod back into Christmas
In 1936, with war clouds gathering in Europe, author E.B. White wrote the following for The New Yorker: “Shopping in Woolworth’s, in the turbulent days, we saw a little boy put his hand inquiringly on a ten-cent Christ child, part…