Many, many years ago I sat in a chapel service at Judson College (now University) that featured a musical group called “Truth.” I had a mad crush on one of the altos who helped run their product table; otherwise I might have never attended. In my desire to hold a meaningful conversation with her after […]
Keeping Faith in Election Years
I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble here, but I need to keep this simple. When the question of the day is “How should a Christian vote?” my one-word answer has become, “Prayerfully.” (That’s simple, isn’t it?) I don’t pretend to tell people which candidate deserves their vote, or gets mine. Frankly, I don’t know […]
The Big Deal about Smaller Churches
They don’t often make national headlines, but smaller churches are a big deal. There are roughly 350,000 Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches in the United States.[i] The median number of people attending these churches is 75. That means half of the churches in the US have 75 or less people attending; half have more. Did […]
Ancient (and Not-So-Ancient) Wisdom and the Pursuit of Perfection
I believe it was the late Glenn Frey of the Eagles who said, “Rock and roll is not about perfection. It is about excellence.” If I recall correctly, Frey was responding to the notion of achieving perfection on any given take in the recording studio. Frey called into question whether anyone could really know what […]
“Thus alone is the Church renewed…”: 2016 and the Barmen Declaration
Rumor has it that on an early summer afternoon in 1934 Karl Barth took a snifter of fine brandy, five stout Brazilian cigars, a manual typewriter and a sheaf of paper and began to flesh out the essential draft of the “Theological Declaration of Barmen[i].” (It is also rumored that Barth finished the document that […]
The Church, the State, and Why Context Matters
Forty years ago this summer, I sat with a group of friends listening to a then-popular fundamentalist teacher who tried his best to make Romans 13 the only biblical source that should inform a “real Christian” what citizenship means. I’ll save you an afternoon’s worth of rabbit torture and sum it up by saying that, […]