Opinion

As both a dad and a youth pastor (who moonlights as a therapist), I encourage you to stop “investing” in your children. It’s killing them, and as your general health care practitioner can attest, it’s not doing your blood pressure any favors either.

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.

Jesus Christ is above party and nation. Confessing Christ is a political statement. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. This means speaking truth to power, regardless of the stance taken by our favorite cable news outlet (or that of our Facebook friends).

Central Seminary’s partnership with Myanmar Institute of Theology calls us to be mindful of what our colleagues wrestle with all the while. As most of the Christian leaders are ethnic minorities themselves, they know the precariousness of existence and freedom. They understand the wounded Body of Christ in ways hard for us to fathom.

Twenty-first century humanity is eating, drinking, marrying and unmarrying, driving, flying, breathing and buying while planet earth decomposes before our very eyes. The fate that befell Noah’s generation seems headed right at us. This time, however, there’s no ark. It is a planetary crisis from which no one can escape.

Good lawyers can grow up in a society that offers preference to rich white men, but the privileged have to recognize their privilege as a gift to be shared. President Trump needs to find a nominee who can imagine what life is like for those who know that no matter how smart they are or how hard they work they will never go to Yale.

Do we want the suffering servant Messiah of the Gospels? Or do we prefer the vengeful, conquering general of Revelation 19? The Messianic image we are drawn to reveals a great deal about what is in our hearts.

I AM SORRY, but there can be no apologies by women when they fill the spaces into which the Spirit calls them or the spaces for which their wit and intelligence gifts them. Women with this heritage ought to be free to fill their space boldly and unapologetically, for this is the space they have been created and called to fill.

I pray that at next year’s conference we will be smashing the patriarchy side-by-side with the men who preached to us as little girls, who taught us in seminary classrooms and who encouraged us to speak truth to power. I pray that next year, the men who say they support women in ministry will rise up in support of this gathering of women who need to see that we are not the only ones advocating for ourselves.

Everyone can play a role in motivating the women and men God has called to lead their church. When this occurs, God is glorified, the church is strengthened, ministers are empowered to do what God has sent them to do and a community’s citizens are drawn to a healthy church serious about being the healing and hopeful presence of Christ.

In 2016 the United States welcomed 85,000 refugees; so far in 2018 we have received less than 21,000. And the cap for 2019 will be the lowest cap on admissions since the program began in 1980. The secretary of state says it’s about “prioritizing the safety and well-being of the American people.” It sounds to me like the studies on generosity are still right: we’ve got too much – affluence and/or fear – to be willing to share.

Those who have voiced their worry about women wandering into leadership roles were right. The presence, voices and leadership of women will bring down walls, the false pillars of faith. These walls give the illusion of control, the illusion of comfort and even the illusion of God’s redemptive work.