This post is from Joe James, at Southside Church of Christ in Rogers ARK If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. –Mother Teresa The root of all division is fear. – Thomas Merton God is not the devil. This seems like an obvious enough claim. Let me tell you why I am saying it. When I take a stroll through our world news, I see division everywhere. I see racial division, political... Read more
Sometimes we can get tied up into a conversation that is peripheral and relatively unimportant, and the emphasis given to that theme can lead us to ignore what is far more important. Like focusing on how clean or unclean the glove compartment is when we ought to be concentrating on driving. I speak of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. Plenty of Christians are functional atheists when it comes to the Third Person of the Trinity and they are... Read more
Pew Research Center What surprises? the Roman Catholics are doing very, very well. The typical mainlines are not. Both preach diversity; the former does it better. Read more
Part III of Gary N. Fugle’s new book Laying Down Arms to Heal the Creation-Evolution Divide looks at the definition of science, the major scientific issues with creationism and intelligent design, and concludes with a discussion of how we might understand God at work in his creation. In the first chapter of this section, The Face of Science, Fugle provides a definition of science and an explanation of the need for methodological naturalism. [N]atural science exclusively studies the properties of... Read more
People enter into leadership for a variety of reasons, including passion and skills and gifts and a desire to lead and a desire to control and — here comes our theme — a desire to serve. I believe many today who are leaders have gifts and skills and passion but too often are dominated by a desire to control and lead and not a desire to serve and lead through empowering others. Gospel-shaped leadership is servant leadership, not control leadership... Read more
Source: Somewhere in Pope Francis’s office is a document that could alter the course of Christian history. It declares an end to hostilities between Catholics and Evangelicals and says the two traditions are now “united in mission because we are declaring the same Gospel”. The Holy Father is thinking of signing the text in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, alongside Evangelical leaders representing roughly one in four Christians in the world today. Francis is convinced that the Reformation... Read more
Is gay celibacy a new version of conversion therapy? By Brandon Ambrosino: Jones is a blogger for Spiritual Friendship, a site devoted to exploring gay celibacy, a issue of increasing interest in Christian circles. Last fall, The Washington Post reported that gay celibates were “emerging from the shadows.” Gay Christians, it seemed, had found a new way to reconcile their faith with their sexual orientation. It also gave the somewhat misleading impression that there was this new group of gay Christians doing something that hadn’t... Read more
Men write books about women all the time; men, in fact, often dictate — that’s not too strong of a term, mind you — what women can and cannot do; men write about what women are permitted by the Bible to do in the church. But very few women write books about men, but now someone has: Carolyn Custis James, Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World. She invents a word for the problem she sees; the term is... Read more
No matter how many define it or (don’t define it) and no matter how many are using the expression, lots gets packaged into a tight and hot bundle when someone critiques the “institutional” church. Here’s “Daniel”: Daniel: I see the institution, the hierarchy, the bureaucracy as crippling the body of Christ. I see it as creating this false dichotomy: If you really want to be influential and important and do something for Jesus, you have to go to seminary, you’ve... Read more
Source: (NEWSER) – There’s keeping a promise to a friend, and there’s this: A couple in suburban Buffalo has adopted the four daughters of a friend who died of cancer, reportsWKBW. “She said if anything ever happens to me I want you to take my girls and I instantly said OK,” Laura Ruffino tells the TV station. She’s referring to Elizabeth Diamond, a single 40-year-old mom who died in April of brain cancer, just months after her diagnosis. Diamond left behind... Read more
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