How can Good Friday be good? Good Friday is the day that Christians all around the world remember the suffering of Jesus Christ on a cross. Depictions of Jesus Christ’s suffering are immortalized within our cultural framework because of such…
Our Silence is driving millennials out of the church
David Gushee, a theologian and ethicist who teaches at the McAfee School of Theology, struck a nerve when he suggested that moderate Baptists with roots in the Southern Baptist Convention could benefit from a statement of faith. Bill Leonard, my…
Homelessness, grief and Holy Week
By Trey Lyon During this Holy Week a story keeps reappearing on my Facebook feed, the tale of the varying responses of an affluent community in North Carolina to a bronze statue of a reclining Jesus, cast to resemble a…
Discovering empty tombs
By Colin Harris You’d think Easter would be easy for a Sunday school teacher. After all, everybody knows what it is, most everybody shows up and nobody is likely to argue against it or to push for its repeal. It’s…
My right to be limited
By Arville L. Earl Some time ago a number of people – I among them — were troubled by a cell phone TV ad which projected the idea that, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” The…
Thinking inside the box
By Amy Butler The leadership art of “thinking outside the box” sounds progressive and cutting-edge. Everybody is talking these days about thinking outside the box, but the reality of the practice is not all that glamorous. I prefer the leadership…
Reflections of Easter
I sit in expectation of the horror of good Friday and in hopeful expectation of the work of Easter Sunday. This time of year is always the most contemplative for me, perhaps because it offers the fullest range of emotion…
Killing Jews
By Molly T. Marshall This past Sunday in Overland Park, Kan., a rabid anti-Semite, gun-wielding white supremacist drove into the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center with the intent to kill. And he succeeded. He shot a grandfather and…
True champions don’t worry about the score
By Will Baker A grueling season of competition has come to an end. The final game in the NCAA Basketball Tournament (March Madness) has been played and the champion has been crowned. At least that’s what we are supposed to…
Finding the associate pastor you need
The role of the associate pastor or minister is one that many churches think they cannot afford. In reality, the are a variety of ministry callings that do not involve staffing a full-time pastor or minister. In many cases, the…
Holy Week reflection: Toward a humble, repentant church
By David Gushee Follow David: @dpgushee Holy Week converges for me with the conclusion of a semester in which I have been teaching seminar courses about the Holocaust and about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This week the brilliant Bonhoeffer scholar Jennifer McBride…
‘Mad Men’ as an exploration of human fallenness
By Steven Harmon “I keep wondering: have I broken the vessel?” Don Draper’s mid-flirtation confession to his airline seatmate in the April 13 premiere of the seventh (and final) season of the AMC drama Mad Men may prove to be…