A Remarkable Journey
Shane Stanford has had a journey through life and ministry like no one else I know. He has faced tremendous adversity and come through with faith, humility, and joy. Check out this interview with Jason Daye. You won’t regret it.
A Book Every Christian Should Read: The Great Dechurching
In the last twenty-five years, about 40 million people have stopped attending church. We can’t blame this on COVID. This trend was well underway before COVID ever appeared. If this fact doesn’t wake us up to the reality Christians are facing in the Global West, I don’t know what will. To learn more about this…
A Great New Study for Your Church
My friend Shane Stanford has written a new book called Journeywise: Redeeming the Broken and Winding Roads we Travel. It’s a study of the Beatitudes and their meaning for the Christian life. Here’s part of the description taken from the website: To be JourneyWise is to discover and live out the simple yet powerful truths…
Two Podcasts and a Few Articles
A few items of interest from recent weeks: Jeffrey Rickman was kind enough to invite me to join him on the “Plain Spoken” podcast to talk about Wesleyan doctrine, particularly as it applies to the Global Methodist Church. And I really enjoyed this audio-only podcast with Carolyn Moore and Pierce Drake on “The Art of…
Reaching Younger Generations for Christ
One of the challenges facing the Western church is that the percentage of young people with no faith (“nones”) is growing. In fact, it may be as high as 30% in the United States. For a variety of reasons, the trend is that fewer members of younger generations find organized religion compelling, and Christianity in…
An Interview on the Work of the Holy Spirit
A few months ago I had the privilege of preaching and teaching at Springdale First UMC. While I was there, I sat down with the Rev. Dr. Andrew Thompson to talk about the Holy Spirit, the charismatic movement, and the work that God is doing in the global church today. Andrew is a good friend,…
Hard Questions and Protestant Churches: We Can Do Better
Protestants aren’t very good at dealing with difficult social/ethical issues. Roman Catholics, while they have their own problems, are much better at this. Why? They have an extensive body of theological and ethical teaching produced for the church and adopted by the church. In my own Methodist world, we have nothing really like this. We…
Inconclusive Musings on Unity
I’ve been trying to write an essay on Christian unity for an ecumenical volume on this topic. I’m supposed to write from my own Methodist perspective. Since I’m a Protestant, I’ve had to think about unity apart from specific ecclesiastical communions (i.e., denominations). Part of what I’ve been kicking around in my head is the…
A Conversation about Liberalism
Rev. Dennis Sanders was kind enough to invite me onto his podcast recently to talk about liberalism. The invitation came as a result of a piece I wrote in Firebrand called “On Liberalisms (They just don’t make ’em like they used to).” I wrote this piece because I’m increasingly concerned about the decline of public…
No Idle Tale (An Easter Sermon)
My sermon for Easter Sunday, 2022