Crisis struck our church body suddenly and without warning. One of our staff members gave birth to her fourth child, only to have that sweet, little life end just a few days later. This sudden loss came as a surprise…
I remember taking an introductory communication course during my first year of college. It wasn’t a profound experience, really, just a community college course outlining a few social science theories while most of the class worked on math homework or…
There are two common dangers in pastoral ministry and Paul is alert to both of them. They are what we might call over-pastoring and under-pastoring. Over-pastoring is what happens when a leader or leaders exercise too much control in the…
Let’s just face the facts. Today, many Christians do not think attending church is that important. In the past, Christians believed that actively being a part of a church body was absolutely necessary to one’s faith. There used to be…
In his book, We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons, political cartoonist and New York Times Op-ed writer Tim Kreider describes the modern epidemic that he calls “outrage porn”: So many letters to the editor and comments on the Internet have…
Embodied Desires A common “churchy” response to this cultural situation runs along basically Platonic lines: to quell the raging passion of sexuality that courses its way through culture, our bodies and passions need to be disciplined by our “higher” parts—we…