Millennial leaders in the trenches: Things the church should know
Millennials are in the trenches of a church that’s in crisis, a Christianity that has been corrupted by nationalism and a society that is wracked by unsustainable economic inequality.
Trauma, resilience, racism: thoughts on moving forward
Are these stories of invisibility the most traumatic ones I could tell? By no means. But they are part of a web of trauma that envelops us all.
Lowering the refugee ceiling would be an abandonment of American leadership
For followers of Christ, the moral response to the global refugee crisis has always been clear. We are called to welcome the stranger, to love our neighbors, to seek justice, to care for the orphan and widow. We are called to have compassion that extends beyond borders.
It’s not new
How long must women of African descent suffer the insulting, racist, body-shaming tactics that continue to suggest ugliness and unattractiveness? How long must women of African descent be labeled as angry and dismissed because we too can be passionate? How long must we be “white washed” in our obedience and compliance, silenced to the point of invisibility? How long?
Toward non-gendered language for God
Many have dismissed inclusive language as “politically correct.” However, it runs much deeper. It is an attempt to speak justly about humans, and it strives to offer a vision of God beyond gender.
Make space for G.R.A.C.E.
To what extent will you go to save face and avoid humiliation or embarrassment to preserve your reputation? Living in an image-conscious society, many people spend an enormous amount of time, money and resources to paint beautiful self-portraits, particularly on the universal platform of social media.
Improvising faith
“Yes, and” is the essential posture for improvisation. But what is the improvisatory offer on this day, in this situation, in this life? Then, again, what else is there but free and faithful improvisation? It is the hope-filled response fitting for a life of faithful discipleship. It is marked by honesty and freedom, responsibility and risk, listening and acting, prayer and community.
Examining Jesus’ ‘incivility,’ politics
Being faithful to God requires political navigation. Literally, Roman coinage bore the image of Caesar. It belonged to the political leader and the institution that he led. Jesus’ sage lesson here exposes the truth about faithfulness to God. Sometimes, politics and religion must mix it up.
Are you a leader who’s a learner?
Learning may be the most important skill for church leaders. To make it as a leader, you must be able to learn from your experience. If you can’t learn or think, then it’s a waste of time. You’ll be unable to adapt to your environment, and you’ll be unsuccessful.
Racial Wealth Gap Learning Simulation helps congregations understand, undo structural racism
Ending racism will require that we truly adopt the concept of being our brothers’ keeper. It will require a transformational shift in how we serve others—shifting from serving some to serving all, especially people who are different from us.
How do you pray when you’re Babylon?
As a white Christian woman, I do not have to worry about being asked about my citizenship. I do not have the same fear when police pull me over in my car. I do not worry about my child being taken from me. I do not worry about being harassed on my way to worship. I have privilege. And when I ignore it, I become part of the system of oppression.
‘What’s going on?’ Today’s world needs peace of God
With all that is happening in this country, one wonders if anyone is experiencing peace and love. If a lack of peace and love is the plague that hovers over America, what is the answer? Perhaps we can find it in Scripture.
A hurricane blessing: a 180-degree change in the church’s role
As instructed by Jesus, we were moved to become the neighbor in our community. That allowed us to experience God’s love, in us and through us.
Welcoming people in from the storm
Every day, people from all over the world come to our house and stand at our door, asking for shelter from the storms of poverty, tyranny, oppression and religious persecution.
Preparing congregations to do justice
Too often, sermons and Sunday school lessons on issues of social justice raise concerns in people’s minds but do little to prepare or empower them to carry out acts of justice. Commonly, church members leave with a vague sense of guilt about the issue, but no clear idea of how to put their concerns into action.
An immigration story
My Bible says that we must welcome the stranger. We must care for the least of these. In doing so, we’re not simply entertaining angels unaware—we’re caring for Jesus himself.
Singing together heals the world
I love music; it is my first language. Although this love was disrupted by the traumatic loss of my mother, I was able to sing my way back to this truth. What truths have been disrupted in our shared life, and how might singing together bring us back to them?
Networked disciples: How digital culture can support faith formation
Participation in digital culture may school people of all ages in basic components of discipleship, including a sense of incompleteness that encourages experimentation with alternative identities; a willingness to be influenced and changed by outside forces; and an adherence to particular structures and habits that shape participation in an ongoing movement of identity-building.
Engaging mission in a media landscape
In light of Luke’s description of Jesus’ life and ministry, I can imagine that “Online Jesus” would seek to cultivate peaceful conditions in our technological landscape, especially conditions that support people who are poor and oppressed.
Chaplain: Congregations can address suicide
For congregations to become centers for refuge and relief, they need clearly to proclaim hope; they need to advocate and resource church- and community-based ministries for those potentially at risk for suicide.
Congregations can use finance as a tool for social change
Congregations large and small can use finance to break cycles of gender-based violence and promote just economic practices right in their own communities.
Exploring the contours of faith in a hungry world
We serve a God whose abundance knows no end, and we live in a world sore in need of signs and deeds that offer hope and embody the discipleship Jesus challenges us to embody.
Ministry in the age of Donald Trump
The challenge for me and for many other Christians is to realize that the pews of many churches in the United States hold persons who voted for Trump. In fact, they may have voted for him precisely because they agree with his views as stated previously—views that may be abhorrent to others in those same congregations.
Making space for grace
God’s grace is yet moving in our midst, reaching out to us, even though our lives be entangled in the brokenness and injustice of the times in which we live.
Where have all the prophets gone?
False prophets are the ones who receive invitations to the Trump White House. Real prophets have to make their voices heard over their more compliant colleagues. That is what Amos did with Amaziah. That is what Jeremiah did with Hananiah. That is what Moses did with the temple priests of Egypt. That is what Martin Luther King, Jr. did while Billy Graham was playing golf with every U.S. president from Truman to Bush. As I ask in my book by the same title, Where have all the prophets gone?
Reformation and resolutions: Baptist gather in Zurich, respond to crisis on the U.S. southern border
Rejecting the claims of some U.S government officials that the Bible justifies a policy of forced separation of families, the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) General Council adopted a resolution which “affirms the clear biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and for followers of Jesus to respond with love and justice to the plight of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.” The resolution encourages Baptists “to prophetically challenge immoral policies that seek to undermine the rights and dignity of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.”
By the Golden Rule, torture is always wrong
The message is simple and clear: According to the Golden Rule, torture is wrong. According to the Golden Rule, torture is always wrong. The Golden Rule is the highest moral principle of humankind. It is worthy to guide you in figuring out what is right or wrong.
Equals at the table
Churches today remain the most segregated organizations that exist, more than any other institution in America. Racism, which divides society to keep dominant power structures intact, has taken deep roots in the church in ways that are subtle, hidden and twisted. Instead of inclusive and countercultural communities, there exist highly exclusive, business-as-usual spirituality clubs or spiritless social justice groups.
No discrimination allowed
The time has come for those who cloak discrimination in religious language to stop. The day is surely coming when the Supreme Court will be forced to address the question of free exercise more broadly. And when that day comes, a bright light will shine on an ugly fact. Let us then be children of the light, and put out signs that say loud and clear, “No discrimination allowed.”
When spiritual siblings unite for the common good
Interfaith dialogue means more than words; it means connecting with our common humanity and collaborating in efforts that uphold the common good for all peoples.
Executive minister: ‘See beyond danger to embrace opportunity’
The characters that make up the word crisis in the Mandarin and Cantonese languages of China are a combination of the English words danger and opportunity — an appropriate way to look at the state of the church and Christendom today.
Learning to live side by side: Being Christian in a multifaith world
The need for personal relationships with those of other faiths and a deeper understanding of one another’s faith and heritage grows more urgent by the day.
Disability and the Bible
What are the promises and pitfalls of these texts with respect to issues of disability? How are they freeing or confining? How do we conduct church in light of our attitudes related to disability dictate?
Faith communities can help erase stigma of mental illness
Nearly one in five of us — 18 percent — has an anxiety disorder. We spend over $2 billion a year on anti-anxiety medications. College students are often described as more stressed than ever before. Anxiety in children is also on the rise. Faith communities are one place to lift up the intrinsic goals of finding meaning, worth and purpose through the shared values of a caring community.
Exploring Lent, Holy Week with young children
Raising children in faith is one of the biggest responsibilities for faith educators — clergy, lay leaders, family members and others. Lent and Holy Week hold their own particular challenges with stories of Jesus’ life, ministry and crucifixion and themes of sin, betrayal, political machinations, death and resurrection. Such topics are difficult for adults to understand, let alone children.
Religious liberty differs from Christian exceptionalism
Yes, religious liberty is enshrined in our Constitution, but people can certainly mess with it because the U.S. Constitution is a living and amendable document.
The American experiment, which is fundamentally what this country is, relies on participation — not only voting (which it demands) but also participation. Showing up. Rolling up the proverbial sleeves. Having ideas, putting feet to them, and making them work. That also means America evolves. The very nature of participation means that the system is changed by those who participate in it; that’s simply how systems work.
On human anger
Those of us who oppose what the president is doing — opposition rooted in deeply Christian principles of justice — have cautioned each other repeatedly: Avoid outrage fatigue, but what outrage does to your heart is far more insidious than fatigue.
Let this Lenten season lead you on a study of Scripture
It’s unsettling, jaw-dropping and alarming to hear the seemingly unending reports of Christians in lockstep with the prejudicial practices, policies and proclamations coming from a chorus of our country’s highest elected officials.
Ash Wednesday: showered with stars
You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
— Genesis 3:19
A moment of your time…
Stewardship in the church has long focused on giving, and well it should… But another stewardship topic deserves equal reflection: Time. More accurately, how we use it. In a world where so many find themselves filling each day to the brim, saving nothing for the margins, time is a scarce resource. The hectic pace at which most of us live often makes it easier to give our church our money than our time.
Shouldn’t praying the Lord’s Prayer make a difference?
After Stephen Paddock’s Oct. 1 shooting rampage in Las Vegas, I had to ask myself whether Christianity could have made a difference. If we prayed the Lord’s Prayer with the understanding that it is meant to empower us to do God’s will in the world, might his life have been different? What might our country be like today if, from the time we first landed on Plymouth Rock, Christians prioritized the kingdom-coming work of bringing God’s love, healing and hope in Jesus’ name?
O God, make us more than…
We come at a time when our nation is badly divided on matters of politics, policies, personalities and partisan practices. But, today, O God, make us more than Democrats or Republicans or Independents. Make us Americans who are deeply committed to the strength of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi and a spark of true hope
As a Christian believer in the midst of Advent, I could feel an even greater hope stirring within, as pop culture often reflects the glimmerings of what the Gospel reveals in full: Despite the world doing its worst, Christ brings us into an abiding, lasting hope and way of living faithfully, boldly and fearlessly. Luke’s Gospel shows us the true power in the world — one that has neither patience for Empire nor a desire to be like anything that humans could conjure up alone.
Disaster spiritual care: A chaplain’s perspective
As I walked throughout the shelter — established in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston — and mingled with those living there, story after story of loss and heartache was shared with me.
“There is still air to breathe,” one man replied, when asked what gives him hope despite all he had lost.
Seeking a God app
God is not in our cell phones, our iPads, our social media pages, our Instagram or Pinterest accounts. Sure, they are great tools for sharing news of inspiration or healing. But if we find our spiritual tanks empty, the best way to refill is to walk outside and look around. Nature is God’s greatest work.
On being ‘repairers of the breach’
Do you remember the pictures after Hurricane Katrina of the broken levees in New Orleans? And recently in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean? Broken levees are metaphors for so much of what is broken in our time — symbols of all that has gone wrong in our nation’s priorities pouring through the broken levees of neglect of the poor, racism, social inequalities and an economic system that favors the few at the expense of the mass.