By Jayne Davis “The road emerged only as I walked it.” — Jurgen Moltmann One of the most exciting things for me in a coaching conversation is listening for the next question. Rather than coming in with the expert hat…
‘Christ has no body but yours’
By Molly T. Marshall Contrary to the many who speak about the church dying, I think it is actually a time of rebirth. We are actually in the process of tossing out some old stuff that wasn’t necessary and finding…
What do Jimmy Fallon, Ernie Banks and Pope Francis have in common?
By Doyle Sager OK, so maybe we can’t draw straight lines connecting TV celebrity Jimmy Fallon, the late baseball great Ernie Banks and Pope Francis. Perhaps the task will require more looping circles than straight lines. But it occurred to…
Private school vouchers: The forbidden fruit
By Kyle Henderson In the beginning, temptation appeared as a fruit. Today, it appears in the shape of a voucher. As tempting as it may be for private, religious schools to pluck the low-hanging fruit of “free” public money, the…
All politics is local? Forget it.
By John Chandler During Singapore’s recent World Cities Summit, National Geographic’s Jeremy Bentham opined on some of the megatrends of ascending urban migration. Noting that the United Nations projects that the world’s population will grow from roughly seven billion today…
There’s no danger in raising questions
By Starlette McNeill This week, I presented on the topic “The Double-Minded Church: Spiritual Formation and the Impractical Theology of Race” at ChurchWorks, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship conference for ministers of education and spiritual formation. I know. The title is…
Uncoerced faith remains a burning question
By Bill Leonard On Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015, the terrorists who call themselves an Islamic State released a lurid video showing the decapitation of 21 Egyptian laborers working in Libya. Taken hostage in January, largely because they were Coptic Christians,…
Answering God’s call isn’t like choosing the right door
By Amy Butler Most days I’m very grateful for my conservative evangelical childhood. For one thing, I can beat almost anybody at sword drill, which has never actually come in handy since I reached adulthood, but I’m not discounting the possibility…
How can you love God but hate your neighbor? You can’t.
By Scott Dickison For those of us in the Western wing of the Christian family, yesterday was the first Sunday in Lent, which began last Wednesday and is the 40-day season of fasting and preparation leading up to Easter. But…
Six words to describe a life: Saints don’t know they are saints
By Brett Younger As a child of deaf parents, she was the one who made the phone call when the refrigerator stopped working. Bennie went to bed knowing she was the one who would hear if something happened during the…
Religion’s week from hell
By Molly T. Marshall This past Monday, CNN religion writer Daniel Burke called the prior week “Religion’s week from hell”: “Whether you believe that religious violence is fueled by faith or is a symptom of larger factors — political instability,…
Why I struggle with Ash Wednesday
By Nora O. Lozano As I prepared to write my column for this month, I checked my assigned publication date as well as the liturgical calendar. To my dismay, I discovered that the day for this publication is Ash Wednesday….