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“Is There A Case for Foreign Missions?”  That was the title of a speech delivered by the writer, Pearl Buck, for a packed gathering organized by the Presbyterian Church in November 1932.  Buck, in summarizing four decades of experience as a missionary kid, wife and teacher in China, was grappling with the deeply problematic inheritance…

My hubby and fellow saint and sinner Paul Dover ran across this article from the BBC which brought tears to my eyes.  It’s about a guy named Jeff Ragsdale who, finding himself alone in the aftermath of a devastating break-up, put up fliers around New York City with his number and a simple message: If…

I was practically lizzing yesterday (to borrow Elizabeth Lemon’s term in “30 Rockefeller”) when I heard this story from someone I ran into the other day.  Apparently he had not set foot in a church for years when he visited one on a recent Sunday morning, with the hope that returning to church would help…

Alan Hirsch’s latest book, The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century Church, co-authored with Tim Catchim, is on my must-read list. Apparently, Hirsch’s main point, according to Hirsch’s Books and Culture reviewer, Gregory Metzger, is this: the five-fold model for ministry set out by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 4- “apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds…

“1.4 million lack power amidst relentless heat,” or so go the headlines these days. Here in Atlanta over the past weekend, the heat index was upwards of 110 degrees.  It was so hot that simply stepping out to get the mail felt like walking through a sauna, and the local pool offered free, unlimited, weekend…

Barbara Brown Taylor spoke at First Baptist Decatur yesterday six years following the publication of her memoir, Leaving Church.  She is one of my role models for her authenticity (an over-used word, I know, but for lack of a better term), groundedness and commitment to telling the truth as a preacher turned writer. Taylor began…

Apparently Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church is doing a whole series on dating and relationships: “You Make Me Crazy” offers “survival skills for relationships.”  I guess “Christian dating” is just one of those perennially hot topics. When I was dating, the burning question was whether to engage in the questionable practice of so-called “missionary dating”- this,…

I’ve just made the virtual acquaintance of Sister Jeanine Gramick, thanks to yesterday’s installment of Andrew Sullivan’s series, “Ask Sister Gramick Anything.”  Sr. Gramick may be best known for her work at the helm of an organization that she started back in 1977: “New Ways Ministry” advocates for the inclusion of gay and lesbian Catholics…

Hillary Spurling’s Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth is my current bedtime companion these days, and I’m probably reading it as a way to better understand myself. You may know Pearl Buck from her seminal, best-selling work, The Good Earth, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and later the Nobel Prize for…

The  “2012 Kingdom Culture” conference hosted annually by Bethel Church, in Redding, California, starts today- and I’m intrigued.  (Are any of you participating? I’d be curious to hear more about what you know or have experienced here.) I’m most intrigued because of the way that Bethel Church describes itself: their web site reads that “the…
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