Opinion

It is a divine calling from God to care for those who have reached this unbearable place in their lives. The church cannot offer some magical spiritual cure. The church can offer the kind of ministry of care and compassion that points to the resilience of the human spirit and to the abiding presence of God’s spirit in every unendurable, overpowering circumstance.

Here is a question that needs to percolate: would coffee be a better symbol for communion? Grape juice is dull. Wine puts you to sleep. Coffee refreshes, revives and stimulates. The Lord’s Table could be a coffee table.

The main characters’ struggle to balance cultural differences and their love for each other hit close to home for my husband, Paul, and me. I felt the mother’s heart, just like I felt my mom and dad’s hearts when I told them I wanted to marry Paul, a poor, Caucasian missionary kid.

While the Church’s core message will never change, the methodologies for practicing our faith will be in a constant state of change for the rest of our life. The changes we will go through in our near future will make our squabbles over matters such as new technology or screens in the sanctuary look laughable.

Ongoing revelations regarding sexual abuse in the Christian Church mean that we’d all better prepare our hearts – spiritually, individually and communally – with the courage of conscience to live and act in a Church and a country that is losing its bearings.

Aretha Franklin was the “Queen of Soul” because her voice and her musical phrasing – and the spirit that both articulated – reached something deeper in all of us; and she did it in a way that really no one else with her talents ever did.

The scourge of overt white supremacy has been with us all along, from the time the first Europeans washed up on these shores. It will persist until we fix it. And it is ours to fix. Now.

The Bible’s accounts of children provide subversive stories which expose pride, hatred and entrenched, institutionalized evil. These stories remind us that our attitudes toward children reveal much about what is in our own hearts regarding all marginalized and devalued people.

We must resist the ungodly and un-Christlike movement of Christian nationalism with all our might. We must decry it in our pulpits. We must soundly reject it with our votes. The future of religious liberty for all depends on it, as does the future of our nation.

It doesn’t matter where you fall on the political spectrum or even how your congregation shakes out politically. If you’re leading a group of people these days, you are feeling the added stress of this moment in our corporate life.

At our annual Preacher Camp, it is pastoral ministry, with all the contextual uniqueness six churches can offer, that brings us to the table. An ancient truth, still challenging and comforting a hungry and hurting world, gives us a common hope and keeps us together.