Romero and the other martyrs were such seeds who died and produced more seeds. The fruit they bore by being willing to die included the many youth and kids we met and in whose faces we encountered Jesus. This is not suffering for the sake of suffering. It is suffering because Christ suffered. It is a suffering that Christ redeems.

Last year, the Roman Catholic Church created a path to membership for Anglican congregations who suddenly found themselves at odds with their leadership. While this does look like desperate poaching from one angle, there’s another angle where it makes sense―if there is a rift in a Christian denomination over doctrine, [...]

No matter the worship style, the challenge is the same: to make a genuine, faithful offering to God without letting it be tainted or qualified by our own pride. Sappy, sentimental hymns and pointless prayers exist in all styles of worship; organ music does not make your praise more heavenly and holding a guitar does not make Jesus more relevant.

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” “Why kill the Buddha?” “Because the Buddha you meet on the road is not the true Buddha but an expression of your longing.” Thus begins Jeff Sharlet’s Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible. If quirky Buddhist fables work as theological slants for religion journalists, [...]

You’re Going to Hell, Boy

It’s two a.m. and I open my email to find the word “REPENT” in all capital letters in the body of the first message I open. Not only am I told to repent, I’m also told I’m going to hell. This is the third time [...]

W. David O. Taylor, ed., For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2010).
In 2008 pastors and artists converged on Austin, Texas for a symposium called “Transforming Culture: A Vision for the Church and the Arts” organized by David Taylor—then Arts Pastor of Hope Chapel in Austin, and [...]

Sometimes
I almost see it
A tremor of inspiration
A gossamer descent
A dove?
Reaction to unseen action
Dancing amidst stillness
Falling cloth?
Clarity of new sunshine
Light tickled by water
Holy spirit?
Promise at vision’s edge
Sometimes

“Can you teach us to memorize something?”  It was a question I never expected. My questioners were two fourteen-year-old boys who earlier that morning had been jumping off large rocks with sharp sticks in their hands and antagonizing a bees’ nest.  This was my summer field ed placement, a camp in the Adirondack Mountains of [...]

One would think the world’s greatest democracy, the most Christian among the economically-advanced nations, would be outraged, ashamed and ready to take to the streets over the fact that we imprison more of our own than any other nation at present or in history. Perhaps we don’t because those of us with money don’t sweat the caging of people who are poorer and darker skinned than we are. In fact, we feel safer because of it… So what should we do about it? What alternative do we have to warehousing two and a half million souls?