It took them long enough but finally David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, in Prodigal Christianity: Ten Signposts into the Missional Frontier,  get round to the “church” as a signpost — #7 in their ten signposts. This is the best chapter so far. Which reminds me that I am excited to be going today with Kris to Alexandria VA to be with the good folks at Missio Alliance, including David Fitch and Geoff Hosclaw. Where is the church in your understanding... Read more

This post is by Chuck DeGroat; I was sent a link by a friend and just have to (re)post the whole thing. Let’s discuss the church and singleness in a way that helps us all. What is your church doing about singleness? How do people understand “singleness”? What advice do you have for churches about singleness? I’ve been married for 16 years, so I can’t very well say, “I understand.”  But, I’ve ministered among college/career aged men and women, I’ve... Read more

From Think Progress: In a new study published in the online edition of the British Medical Journal,researchers write that a 50 percent reduction in daily salt intake “could prevent approximately 100,000 deaths from heart attack and stroke in the United States every year.” Curbing salt intake by that high a margin is certainly a mean feat — but not because Americans are saturating their food with sodium. Rather, study authors suggest that the real culprits are food makers who douse their... Read more

How about you? LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some people have had it with TV. They’ve had enough of the 100-plus channel universe. They don’t like timing their lives around network show schedules. They’re tired of $100-plus monthly bills. A growing number of them have stopped paying for cable and satellite TV service, and don’t even use an antenna to get free signals over the air. These people are watching shows and movies on the Internet, sometimes via cellphone connections. Last... Read more

The word “liturgy,” like the word “art,” is generally used for what happens in liturgical churches on Sunday morning when they trot out a list of already-chosen Bible texts and read them, and they then have a church worship service in which much reflects an order from which the liturgical service rarely departs. Which is only partly true if one knows what happens. Liturgy in this sense differs from low church spontaneous services. Bruce Ellis Benson contends all of life for... Read more

From Storylines, by Donald Miller, thanks Donald: I’ve always had mixed feelings about George W. I voted for him once (his second term) and coming from Texas, had something of an emotional tie to the former President. Not only that, but I like him. I naively believe, of all the former Presidents, he and I would get along the best. I’d rather sit in a duck blind with a dog and George W. than with anybody else. I think we’d... Read more

Andrew Root, in The Relational Pastor, says it well: “Loneliness reveals personhood because loneliness is the confession of lost relationship; it is clutching to find your personhood… the feeling of loneliness is the closest experience that we have to death. It is to be dead to all others; it is to be alone” (61). That’s heavy, especially for an opener to a blog post. But Root presses on: “there is no humanity without relationship.” He illustrates this by comparing an individual... Read more

This is but the end of a long article at The Atlantic, but I hope you read it all and you will say that things are changing: My afternoon with Dr. Borland [theology prof at Liberty University] was very enjoyable. He took me [a withdrawing gay student] on a tour of his house, showed me his enormous collection of antique books, and took me outside to chop some firewood. We had tea together, and discussed some theological concepts from class,... Read more