[The Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter offers this response to the new book The Recovery-Minded Church for our Book Club roundtable discussion this month.] The Recovery-Minded Church by Jonathan Benz with Kristina Robb-Dover is a thoughtful, loving look at ministering to addicts in our midst. My concern with the approach detailed in this book is that it is really two, separate books in one cover: a book about churches and clergy reaching out to addicts in their midst so as to help... Read more
No joke: a pastor walks into a bar and starts a church. Also no joke: it works. Five years later, the Rev. Jerry Herships’ AfterHours Denver is a thriving bar ministry with a real-world mission to feed the poor and homeless downtown. Every Monday night at a different host bar around Denver, up to 50 people gather to have community, talk about God, and most importantly, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The rest of the week, with the help of... Read more
By Susan Barnett, Founder, Faiths for Safe Water My dad was the most popular guy in the neighborhood during a snowstorm. He had an old 1950s truck with a bright yellow plow attached to the front. He’d plow all the neighbors’ driveways, leaving them with just the small pathways to clear and making the grueling chore of shoveling so much easier. I grew up in the snow belt of northwestern Pennsylvania. My dad had lots of days to drive around... Read more
“Theology that is living, life-giving and mattering today can’t be what it used to be.” — Tripp Fuller, Director of Theology and Humanities, Hatchery LA, and founder, Homebrewed Christianity Patheos is honored to be co-sponsoring an exciting new interactive theology event this spring called Enfolding Theology: Theology after God, March 3-6, 2016 in Redondo Beach (yes, the beach!). The event is co-conceived of and co-hosted by Tripp Fuller, one of the most creative, brilliant, and just crazy fun young theologians around today. If you’ve... Read more
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the only member of his immediate family who was murdered. Dr. King’s mother, Alberta King, was fatally shot as she sat at the Ebenezer Baptist Church’s new organ, playing “The Lord’s Prayer” as her husband, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. was in the pulpit, preaching. She was 70 years old. Her husband, Rev. King, Sr. watched it all as it happened during a Sunday morning church service. Rev. King, Jr. was... Read more
Everybody, at some point in their life, wants a miracle. But it is usually when all hope is gone; when every cure has been tried and every test has been taken; when all of our best thoughts and efforts appear to have been in vain; when we stand empty-handed, perplexed and desperate ~ at that exact point we are finally open to the transforming grace of a miracle. Jesus’ first miracle, performed at a wedding in Cana, did not fit... Read more
How do we adequately give tribute to Dr. King this year? Here is one way. One simple, oh-so-obvious way that we seem to have forgotten it. Take a step forward, cross the barrier of race, religion or class, and talk to one person who does not look or live like you. Even if it makes you uncomfortable. Read more
“The nonprofit world has become complacent, static, timid, risk-averse, and minimalistic. We have inherited systems that compromise success. We have been taught leadership wrong.”— Hugh Ballou This week, Patheos launches an exciting new blog for nonprofit leaders called The Nonprofit Entrepreneur. Blog author Hugh Ballou is a transformational leadership strategist and corporate culture architect and has worked for 30+ years with visionary CEOs, pastors, and nonprofit leaders and their teams to develop a purpose-driven high performance collaboration culture. Learn more about Hugh’s... Read more
“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” (Joel 2: 28, Hebrew Scriptures) “The spirit of God … will reveal to [people], even in the simplest of matters, what they shall do, by making suggestions to them. We should try to learn the nature of this spirit, that we may understand its suggestions, and then we will always be... Read more
Enough already! Many of us have confusion, misgivings, sorrows and anger about Christian churches and Christianity itself and what has become of it. I get it. Encountering pastors who believe they have all the answers; entering or hearing about a church that shames and blames people into submission and confession; doctrines, creeds and mission statements that assume their way is the only (or at least the “right”) way, and so on, is a turn-off to many. A national, denominational devotional... Read more
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