There isn’t much in scripture that seems to indicate Our Lord will be using my email habits to judge my soul. I don’t think He’ll have to look that hard. Nevertheless, forwarded emails about Jesus that demand I send them on to ten people or surrender my salvation make me nervous. “Stop what you’re doing and read this email. If you love Jesus, pray for the person who sent this to you and then forward this to ten people. If... Read more
Today I ran across an interesting commentary on the quick fixes churches apply to the church growth problem. Dan Dick was writing about the United Methodist experience, but his comments could apply across the board. He considered the measures the denomination and local churches had taken to reverse church decline, and noted that “The United Methodist Church has suffered through over 50 years of “church-in-box” programs that have produced poor results at best.” He goes on to describe the effects... Read more
“Why, O Lord, do you stand off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” The deaths of 68 young people at a camp in Norway silences us with horror and grief. The looming menace of the federal government’s default makes us stoop with dread and frustration. The drought and famine in Somalia appalls and saddens us. Violence in Afghanistan, cholera and reconstruction in Haiti, the loss and destruction in Japan, the increasing political tension in Venezuela, the arrest... Read more
This week a handful of us had a lively conversation about Dorothy Sayers’ “Why Work?” essay. Written in 1942, the essay tackles head-on Sayers’ concerns about her society’s consumption patterns and what they say about our perception of the value of work. The early part of the essay considers the economic consequences of unrestrained capitalism – its easy, throw-away social attitudes toward products, its aggravated and victimized attitude toward employers, its lethargy and fatigue in jobs for which we are... Read more
It’s not like I was a frequent customer. Its absence doesn’t directly affect me at all. But Borders Books is no more, and I have the Borders blues. Oh, I freely admit I’ve been an Amazon junkie for a long while. (Sorry, Steven.) But bookstores are not shopping sites only; they’re destinations. Bookstores are for the imagination, not just the objective. Bookstores are for wandering, and quick reading of books I would never have picked up anywhere else, and reminding... Read more
After a long while in the spiritual life, most of us come to the point where we realize we’re making very little “progress.” Over and over we come to the shocking realization that the same weaknesses, the same pettiness, the same hardheartedness plague us in ever new and shifting forms. Like germs, mutating to fit every new circumstance and every valiant effort to be slain, these frightful personal demons relentlessly guard us from grace. Enough, already, we weep. When will... Read more
The bones drying on the shelves … not so different from the valley of dry bones, the lifeless remnants of community. Can these bones live? The old prophet was wise enough not to posture, not to philosophize, not to speculate, not to issue any power statements. O Sovereign Lord, you alone know. All around us are the dry bones of God’s people. Catholics devastated by their clergy’s abuses of power. Anglicans staggering through disunity and mistrust. Evangelicals tossed to and... Read more
Sometimes it seems that Christians of every stripe get more energy from differentiating themselves from one another than they do in uniting with one another. “I’m not that type of Christian.” I do this, I don’t do that; I believe this, I don’t believe that; I vote this way, I don’t vote that way; I used to associate with these people, I never associate with them anymore; I am for this, I am not for that; I watch this guy,... Read more
When we study the beginnings of the Church, we face first of all the shock that the world exhibited when they heard the gospel message. What?? A crucified King? What kind of upside-down story is this? We want a god who is powerful, not weak; victorious, not defeated; regal, not spit upon. And resurrected? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not really, right? Just ritualistically? Wait, you mean, really? (Note to those who argue that Jesus wasn’t physically raised from the dead: No... Read more
Whenever I teach a survey of Church history, I include at the very beginning some comments about the extraordinary growth rate of the Christian community in the first century. Some historians suggest that in less than three centuries after Christ, more than 10% of the Roman Empire’s population was Christian. Scholars attribute this rapid spread to a wide variety of factors, but one of the most pivotal was the Church’s treatment of women. When I’ve addressed this issue, I often... Read more
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