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The other day I heard something that I often hear in various Christian circles. “My husband and I have a heart for bringing Jesus to people,” someone said. And, I can appreciate the sentiment behind the remark. But, bringing Jesus to people? Whenever I hear that line, I tend to shudder just a bit.  Kind…

It is frankly absurd to believe that God came into this world as, of all things, a human being.  Fully divine, yes, but fully human, too. Yet the whole crux of Christianity, I believe, hangs on this one great, scandalous mystery called “the Incarnation.” Here are missional church thinkers Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost in…

Some people really know their Bibles.  One of them is Steve Hayner.  Steve is the president of Columbia Theological Seminary, in Atlanta, Georgia, and has taught missiology, pastored churches, and worked at the helm of the student ministries organization, InterVarsity.  He also has gotten three degrees in biblical studies, and has written a book on…

Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish” featured a piece yesterday on how radio programming initiatives are keeping alive the dying minority languages of New Zealand’s Maori peoples:  “In the Maori community of New Zealand, for example, the combination of 21 radio stations and rigorous early childhood immersion programs have brought Maori-languages speakers from an all-time low of…

I appreciate the sentiment of Emily Dickinson:  “Consider the lilies- is the only commandment I ever obeyed,” she once quipped (as quoted in the intro to Rachel Held-Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood). Because while I used to think that keeping the Ten Commandments would be simple, a few more years of life have taught…

The east African nation of Burundi has witnessed a long, bloody, and tragic history of civil war.  The same ugly tribalism and brutality between Hutus and Tutsis that have swept neighboring Rwanda- (resulting in 1994 in a genocide of more than 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis)- have been part and parcel of Burundi’s story. The country…

Did God help Gabrielle Douglas win?  That was the question posed by Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams in a recent piece penned for the magazine and forwarded by fellow saint and sinner Irene Lin.  It’s an interesting question, one that Williams poses with a bit of heartburn:  the “clearly authentic image of a hardworking girl…

In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, titled “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?,” Ross Douthat makes the observation that last week, as the Episcopal Church was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere.  “They showed something between a decline and a collapse:…

“If any of you come to me…and don’t hate your father and your mother, your wife and your children, your brothers and your sisters- yes, and even your own life!- you can’t be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26 So much for “family values.”  Maybe that’s because Jesus, as N.T. Wright reminds us in his commentary…

“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…
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