The work is done, and the Christianity21 booklet (a breathtaking compilation of Paul Soupiset’s sketches and Courtney Perry’s photos) an extended DVD from Don Heatley (which brought Doug to tears when he saw it), and all of the talks on a CD in mp3 format are in production and will ship before the end of the month. ORDER YOURS TODAY! Read more
This is part of a series of posts in which I’m reflecting on Christian Smith and Patricia Snell’s new book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. Today, I’m going to present what happens between the teen years (13-17) and the emerging adult years (18-23), according to Souls in Transition in regards to religious affiliation. There’s lots of data in the book, and very many different religious groups are dealt with therein, but I’ve culled the... Read more
I get sent a lot of books to read, and most of them are, to put it bluntly, skubalon. Some I endorse, some I do not. And, to this point, I have not reviewed many on my blog. However, I’d like to make a point to start reviewing some here. But I’m only going to post positive reviews, and that’s primarily because I’m not a book reviewer by trade. Those people, like restaurant critics, need to maintain a certain distance... Read more
This is part of a series of posts in which I’m reflecting on Christian Smith and Patricia Snell’s new book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. As I wrote yesterday, Chris Smith’s prequel to Souls in Transition, Soul Searching, didn’t particularly jibe with my assumptions about youth and youth ministry in Postmodern Youth Ministry. Nor did it jibe with Chap Clark’s conclusions in another influential youth ministry book, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers. ... Read more
One of the most highly trafficked posts in the history of this blog is, “Something Is Wrong at Young Life,” which I wrote shortly after the firing of Jeff McSwain from Young Life staff. At the time, I wasn’t the only voice in the mix, either. Christian Smith (whose book I’m working through this week) and others spoke up, and both Christian Century and Christianity Today covered the mess (the differences in the headlines of those two articles is telling:... Read more
Scot has already begun posting about a book that I’ve read recently and really, really recommend: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. I used it as a launching pad for my talks at Montreat last week, and I developed some charts that elucidate some of the findings. Over the next few days, I want to post some of these graphs and provide a little commentary from my perspective. Here’s a little backstory. I’ve had the... Read more
As I wrote on Saturday, I led the sermon time at Solomon’s Porch on Sunday. As is our practice, we’re working our way through a book of the Bible, and this time it’s Genesis (I think it’s the second time in the 10-year history of Solomon’s Porch that we’ve gone through Genesis). Last night it was the part of Genesis that we moderns refer to as “chapter 22,” otherwise known as the “Binding of Isaac,” (or sometimes misleadingly called the... Read more
Mark Jordan, professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School, writes at Religion Dispatches about how he has answered journalists’ questions when they call him for a quote about sexuality issues in the church. He often found the journalists to be dumbfounded because, even though the journalists might be progressive themselves, they had, to a man, bought the conservative line that the conservative version was the authoritative version of the biblical narrative. He would say, “I support ordaining openly lesbian and... Read more
I’m leading what we call “sermon time” at Solomon’s Porch tomorrow night, and the text is Abraham’s “binding of Isaac.” I’m most interested in why this story was so intriguing to Kierkegaard that he wrote an entire book, Fear and Trembling, about it. Has anyone read that? What are your thoughts? Read more
Let me join the chorus of voices welcoming Tic Long back to Youth Specialties, now part of the YouthWorks world. Tic was nothing but gracious to me over my ten years of speaking at the National Youth Workers Convention, even though I know that some of my content resulted in him and the YS staff getting grief. Tic took some chances involving me, including arranging debates over theological and social issues with guys like Duffy Robbins, Chap Clark, Fred Lynch,... Read more
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