Culture warriors make crummy Christians. As liberals and conservatives battle for dominance American religion has been co-opted by both sides. Conservatives want to shore up the mainstays of traditional American culture: a civil religion suitable for teaching in the public…
Is public sentiment shifting from free will to determinism?
Pick your arena — Calvinism versus Arminianism, moral liberty versus determinism, Rush’s “Freewill” versus Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — there’s quite a bit of conversation in the scientific community these days about what philosophers have debated for centuries. That…
Seeing God (a short tale)
A devout, Christian man was told that he was going to be given an opportunity of a lifetime: he was going to get the chance to see God. He did everything he could to prepare for the occasion. He spent…
Looking for blame in the midst of congregational decline
My colleague Bob Dale often asks me a simple question: “Bill, what are we hearing out there in the churches?” He knows that every week members of our team are fanning out across the country to work in dozens of…
You can’t go home again. But that’s OK.
You know the saying that goes, “You can never go home again”? The phrase was running through my mind as I drove the four hours from New York to Washington last weekend to attend the installation of the Revs. Maria…
Ready or not, church, change is coming
“You know that trick where a person pulls the tablecloth off of a table set with fine china, leaving everything standing as if it hadn’t been touched?” This was to be our final staff meeting as a team. Dr. Jim…
‘Don’t shoot! You’re all getting A’s!’
What if campus carry is simply the most dangerous of an unceasing set of classroom distractions, existing alongside tweets, texts, Google, Wikipedia and Facebook, diversions that thwart both instruction and provocation, disengaging students from ideas that might form or re-form them?
Whatever happened to evangelism?
It’s a fair question. It’s a good question. But it’s one which needs unpacking.
Alive in the heat of the Holy Spirit
Preaching through Lent and Eastertide is a daunting task, and pastors give their best energies to understanding the remarkable ways in which God has reset the whole horizon for humanity through the testing, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the…
In the midst of a changing neighborhood, finding what’s important — people
On Saturday, little Bobby walked down to the corner store. He had no money. But he did have his bookbag and, even at just 9 years old, some practice at getting his hunger sated without the aid of money. On…
Measurable data misses the point of a community of faith
Recently, someone asked me about the “measurable data” of my years of ministry. The question bemused me and my sense of calling. The question is clear. It is about numbers: attendance, baptisms, annual giving, and other quantifiable characteristics. But the…
Even monsters pet dogs: Grappling with evil
Currently, I am living in Germany as a Fulbright scholar at Johannes Gutenberg University. During my time here, I have visited concentration camps, attempting to understand how an advance and civilized society, a culture which gave the world Beethoven, Luther…