My 15-year-old son has taken to introducing me as a “retired pastor.” It’s hard to shake loose of that title for me, too. It’s probably because being a pastor is more of an identity than a job, more a personality…
REFLECTIONS FROM NEW YORK: Imagining new places
Moving into new places presents a unique challenge to imagine and re-imagine our past lives in relation to the present locations in which we find ourselves. Walter Rauschenbusch, the late 19th-century and early 20th-century pastor, church historian and social gospel…
LEADERSHIP LINK: As I write this
Every church has a few of them. Some have many — people who live with chronic pain or illness. Some of them live in families or in retirement communities, but many of them live at home, getting by the best…
OPINION: No more pretending
I'm going to rent myself a house In the shade of the freeway I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning And go to work each day And when the evening rolls around I'll go on home and lay…
OPINION: Art, existential questions and the heart of the church
It is time to bring the power of the arts to the heart of the church. The arts are one of the most powerful means by which we explore the human experience. Through the arts we mine the deep existential…
OPINION: Bearing witness to the dignity of all God’s children
Martha prepared the tomb for him, a borrowed one offered because there was no place for his lifeless body to rest. He was reviled; he was despised; political authorities spent great effort to end his life. When they succeeded many…
TRENDING: Conversion, churchmanship, discipleship
I wrote earlier this spring about the death of Dallas Willard and the impact his life and ministry had on getting the “discipleship” conversation to the forefront in North American evangelicalism. One of the ways he did this was to…
WINN RECOMMENDS: Books that matter
Some of the very best stories are the true ones. Here are two memoirs and one collection of heroic figures that would be worthy of your time. Booked, Karen Swallow Prior (T.S. Poetry Press) Prior is an English professor, so…
REVIEW: In ‘Star Trek Into Darkness,’ church can find model of apostolic boldness
J.J. Abrams returns with his second take on Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek.” It is clear that Abrams is a student of the series. Much of this film is taken from the lore of the series and the previous films. The…