The Baylor Survey of Religion studied religious experience ( Rodney Stark, What Americans Really Believe. Almost scorned by theologians and professors and routinely ignored by research into religions, The Baylor Study found that 2 of 3 respondents reported having at least one religious experience and 45% said they had two or more such experiences. Yes, the question is “What constitutes a religious experience?” Here are the questions the Survey asked with the percent of affirmations after: 1. I heard the voice of... Read more

From USAToday… For the sake of argument, let us set aside questions about the truth of religion vs. the truth of science. Suppose there is no such thing as religious truth, as Richard Dawkins argued in The God Delusion. Allow that the “New Atheist Noise Machine,” as American University communications professor Matt Nisbet calls it, has a privileged grasp of the truth. Even with these concessions, it still appears that the New Atheists are behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies. There is something... Read more

I’m teaming up with Mel Lawrenz and the worship staff at Elmbrook for a one-day event that seeks to connect preaching ministry with worship ministry. It’s an all-day event on June 29 at Elmbrook near Milwaukee. My focus will be the study habits of pastors and then a sermon on James, Mel will speak about creativity with sermons, and then the worship staff will actually put together a worship service on James. But they will make their way of doing... Read more

How can we talk about God? Seriously, the vastness and immensity and infinity of God beggar description and tax human language to the limit, so taxing in fact that we must admit the limitations of all God-talk. This is the topic taken up by  Ron Highfield in chp 5 of his excellent book, Great Is the Lord: Theology for the Praise of God.   I confess that the limitations of human language in talking about God is important to me, and... Read more

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. or this O God, who on this day... Read more

Book Review by Andy Holt, who blogs at The Sometimes Preacher. Book by Gina Welch, In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church . People love fish out of water stories. In her first book, In the Land of Believers, Gina Welch straps on the scuba suit and tries to live with the fish. While growing up in Berkeley and attending college at Yale, Gina had heard all about “evil evangelicals” and their... Read more

The psalmist gives reasons to be thankful to YHWH in Psalm 16:5-11, and even if lines here were later used to affirm resurrection, for the psalmist there is a heavy emphasis on God caring about and providing for ordinary life with ordinary provisions and ordinary, daily protection.  For which things the psalmist is thankful. Let us count the ways for the psalmist: 1. Stability and prosperity and security (v. 5). 2. Location and land (v. 6). 3. YHWH’s guidance and... Read more