Each and every year around this time, thousands of churches around the country participate in an organization called Operation Christmas Child. If you are unfamiliar with Operation Christmas Child, the gist is this: churches distribute pre-printed shoebox-sized cardboard boxes, which…
Givenness
By Scott Dickison Marilynne Robinson, the gifted writer, novelist and Christian apologist, argues in her new collection of essays that for all our modern questioning and search for meaning we often fail to appreciate the “givenness of things.” I’m taken…
5 suggestions for Christian voters
By Jeff Harris The 2016 presidential election is still a year away and I am already tired of it. Maybe I’m too cynical, but the 24-hour news cycle has a way of bringing out the worst in us. Our dumbed-down,…
How a Baptist preacher learned about mass incarceration
These days, everybody seems to agree that mass incarceration–the policy of fighting crime by locking up as many people as possible for as long as possible–was a really bad idea. Charles and David Koch, Ted Cruz, and a steadily lengthening…
When it comes to congregational vision, may you be with the source
In greed we trust
You likely heard recently that former hedge fund manager-turned-entreperneur Martin Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the patent to a drug treating toxoplasmosis, a potentially deadly parasite disease, increasing the per pill cost from $13.50 to $750. (Before being sold several…
Reformation Day — 498 years and counting
By Brett Younger Seminary professors spend a lot of time around 24-year-olds. As a result, we spend a lot of time feeling old. Our church experience is different from theirs. My parents took me to church three times a week….
I pray with my eyes open
When I began professional ministry as a young single minister, on Sunday mornings all I needed were my keys, my wallet, and my Bible. Flash-forward six years, and I was packing a bag with diapers, wipes, bottles, a change of…
Evangelicals, admit racism is real
By Alan Rudnick News broke on Wednesday that South Carolina deputy Ben Fields, who brutally abused a student in school — WWE-styled — was fired. The abuse was caught on tape. This incident was the latest in a series of…