Two people stepped onto the stage at Hofstra University. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One of them will likely become the next president of the United Stated of America. Division runs deep in the election. Palpable tension seemed to erupt…
Can we talk about sexuality?
Can we talk about sexuality? Recently a pastor in Kansas has been challenging my school and me personally on our position concerning our faithfulness to Scripture concerning human sexuality. It reminds me of the sustained conversation in Southern Baptist life…
Pushing people to purpose
When Gil Rendle speaks, I listen. He’s been a pastor, author and consultant. Now retired, his work has inspired me and given voice to much of what I see and feel is happening in congregations. He “gets it”, in a…
Make every day Earth Day
“The great lesson from the true mystics … is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends and family, in one’s back yard.” —Abraham Maslow, Religion, Values…
Helicopter preaching
In early July, I called the Rev. Dr. Darryl Aaron, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C. It was the latest moment in our country’s crisis of racism and violence, as we mourned Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. My…
Before the chasm is too great: Reflections on Luke 16.19-31
The Gospel reading for Sunday, Sept. 25, takes us to the bosom of Abraham. Well, technically Luke’s telling has angels carrying Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham after a life of isolation, neglect and suffering. The rich man who overlooked…
The civility of discourse
“They’ll tell anything on you down in town.” So the serpent-handling woman says as she sits on her Appalachian front porch, killing flies and defending her church’s approach to the sixteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Whether in cheap novels, academic…
Creating our own American hell
In the last several days, I have watched yet more police shootings, with compelling video evidence that the use of such force was highly unjustified. I watched a United States senator handily dismantle a Wall Street banker (in a hearing…
When is enough enough? Living with the myth of scarcity
It was a perfect Sunday afternoon on the Upper West Side. A 15-minute wait at the Popover Café was well worth it for the strawberry butter alone. But patience and luck afforded me the coveted corner booth with ample room…
Standing as loving accomplices on a front porch surrounded by police
It is a Friday night not long after I have moved to Enderly Park, which is located on Jesus’ side of the tracks. Our living room is filled with teens. We are playing cards, not because we like cards that…
A new framework for thinking about church budgets
This is, hands down, the least favorite time of year for pastors everywhere: church budget planning season. Nobody likes budget planning, from the tedious work it entails to the way in which money necessarily informs the work of the church,…
What if church doesn’t matter?
Americans are a remarkably faithful people when it comes to spirituality, yet they are simultaneously, remarkably faithless when it comes to institutional religion. Why? This perplexity borders on cliché since it has been true for a number of years, but…