By Allan Bevere. I like nice… nice is…well… nice. To Quote Major Frank Burns inM*A*S*H, “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.”But nice is really boring.Jesus wasn’t boring. The crowds didn’t follow him all over Judea and Galilee hanging on every word he spoke because we was just nice. Nice hardly attracts crowds. Nice doesn’t radically transform lives. Nice doesn’t get one strung up on a cross. The day after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples are... Read more

The Parable of Bette Midler and the SI Swimsuit Edition I didn’t always know Him. Thought I did. And before that, for a long time, I didn’t know him at all. God, that is. I mean, I wasn’t always a disciple, a ‘servant of the Lord.’I didn’t even attend a regular worship service- ever- until about the same time I was attending Driver’s Ed. My excitement for the latter was in inverse proportion to the former. I didn’t make God... Read more

Michelle Van Loon, and follow the link to read the rest: Are you aware of the luggage others are carrying?  If you attended a church service this weekend, you may have been sitting in a roomful of suitcases. There’s no way to tell what percentage of people in a given congregation are schlepping baggage from a previous negative church experience, but I suspect the numbers would startle even veteran church leaders. Bad baggage is often eagerly recycled by leaders. This... Read more

Michael Gehrling’s honest reflections on singleness: I’ve learned a lot about singleness. I’ve even come to appreciate it, and can agree with the Apostle Paul that singleness is a gift as valuable as marriage. I can see that the gift of singleness is more than having extra time to devote to “ministry.” Singleness is the gift of flexibility, mobility, and availability to others. Singleness is the gift of giving anyone undivided attention. It’s the gift of being a good friend... Read more

By John Frye: Self-Talk and Storytelling Pastors, let’s discipline our inner conversations. In Psalm 42, the song-writer talks to himself, to his soul. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God…” What we have here is an example of self talk. I googled ‘self talk’ and was stunned to see that there are over 8 million entries. I followed up by googling ‘self talk quotes’ and the number doubled to over... Read more

Adam Taylor reports about the Pew study of Catholic decrease and Protestant increase in Latin America. This chart tells it all: Read more