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The “invisible children” performed a praise song for us on the day we visited their makeshift home.  We had pulled in to this cluster of refugee huts at Uganda’s border with Sudan for an afternoon of worship together, while the National Geographic photographer accompanying us conducted a string of back-to-back interviews of some of the…

We preachers have our most embarrassing moments.  I imagine it’s true for musicians, too.  The other night I witnessed one. Mumford & Sons’ lead singer Marcus Mumford, performing for a full house at Ryman Theater, in Nashville, Tennessee, first forgot the lyrics to one of the band’s more popular songs, and then later in the…

What if the Shakespearean-slow death of the mainline church in America were really an opportunity? I think it is.  In fact I would venture to say that the possibilities for new life for God’s people and the world are breathtaking. With declining church membership and budgets, the older model- of a seminary-trained minister “professional” called…

The other day the blog, “Real People, Real Lives, Real Spirituality,” asked where I feel most “spiritually connected.”  (You can find the interview and others of ordinary people trying to make sense of life at the intersection with God here: http://blog.spiritualbookclub.com/).  I gave an answer that I realize was incomplete. Because the truth is I feel…

Jesus died in the open air.  He didn’t die in a temple. When we remember our own brokenness and death and receive ashes on our foreheads, we should be doing so in the open air, not in the recesses of some church building. That’s Lauren Winner’s latest wild and crazy idea, and I like it.…

It is hard to be honest as a minister about the fact that I am not very good at praying. Sure, I do it.  Most mornings these days I sidle up next to Jesus with a cup of coffee and a passage from Scripture.  Some days there is a long laundry list of intercessions: “Please…

Yesterday’s exchange with a stranger on Facebook who saw Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize winning picture and my accompanying prayer and proceeded to explain why my prayer, with its inappropriate, “Mother-Spirit” language, would not be heard and why I, an “unsaved sinner” would not be answered, sparked some thinking and praying yesterday.  By “thinking” I mean…

Forgive me, Father God, for seeking shelter in the statistics, so that I might never have been obliged to know that somewhere in the middle of the Sudan, an abandoned child bowed down to You in starvation, waiting to become a vulture’s next meal. Help my unbelief, Friend and Brother Jesus Christ, when I doubt…

The other day my son’s pre-K teacher commended him for continuing with his work when the other kids around him were goofing off.  My son had gone on dutifully coloring away with his crayons when he could have been lured away from the task at hand.  I was proud of my son, with one corrective:…

This video is an intimate look at the systemic nature of the commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking of women and girls.  The woman in the video who is narrating the story is herself a survivor of sexual exploitation, and she, through a ministry called “GEMS,” has since dedicated her life to helping some of…
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