One of the most illuminating things I ever heard about leading generously involved Johnny Carson. For most of my childhood he was host of The Tonight Show: late nights were Johnny Carson at 10:30 and David Letterman at 11:30. They could not have been more different but were each hilarious in their own way. If you go back and rewatch
This is a milestone year for World Methodist Evangelism! 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of WME and we are enthusiastically planning to celebrate throughout the year. Since 1971, when the World Methodist Council established WME, our vision has been that Christ followers within the global Wesleyan Methodist family would become agents of transformation by sharing the Gospel through the power
Churches around the world honor the “cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us – all those people who shaped, challenged, and carried us forward on our spiritual journey. When I contemplate the saints in my own life, I’m reminded of two interrelated ideas. The first is called six degrees of separation; the second, three degrees of influence. In theory,
A Response to the Assault on the Capitol of the United States January 11, 2021 Each Thursday morning, at 8:00am (eastern time), I lead the Wesleyan Methodist family across the globe in a time of prayer on Facebook Live. We focus on the needs of our world and on the continuing COVID crisis. The events at the US Capitol on
We have traveled (less this year than others) through the days of Christmas feasting, arriving like the Magi at Epiphany. This is a blessing on a prosaic scale: as a child, Christmas was one day, not 12; and given all the build-up, something seemed off about abandoning festivities so quickly. The cadence of maneuver through 12 days makes more rhythmic
Luke 2:25-40 The good news we take into the new year is that grace is trickling down and seeping upward before we ever realize it. As we pray, we listen. We ask if there’s anything we need to hear, anything at all. And then we wait. Faith is the art of waiting on active, unseen grace, like trusting that crocus
When my son, Nathan, was a kid he had a watch with a dial that would glow in the dark. The only problem was that it never seemed to be dark enough to see it glow. One day, all the kids were playing in our basement, which is like a cave – it’s PITCH DARK. No light gets down there.
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the
“Let’s put him on blast!” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but I instantly knew what it meant: whatever the business’s misstep had been, the call was sent out to grab it by its social media handles and tear it down. A bit of photographic evidence, a globally-audible, locally-tangible siren, and the business was tagged: the company was now “it”—a
Go in peace,Remembering that the Christ who was King and is King and will forever be KingWas born not to a family of nobles and princes,But to a family who couldn’t even place their child in a proper crib;a manger would have to do. Go in peace,Remembering that the Christ who would be both the high priest and the perfect
Christmas is almost here! Thinking backing over the last few weeks, when have you felt the most peaceful? When have you felt the most stress or anxiety? As you think ahead to the coming week, what are you looking forward to? What, if anything, are you dreading? Offer those things into God’s care.
Yesterday was the third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete Sunday; “gaudete” is Latin for “rejoice.” Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals that joy and rejoicing are an inevitable overflow in the lives of people who have understood and experienced God at work in their lives.
As good as the story of Esther is, however, it presents us with a problem: God is absent. Unlike other Old Testament stories, where we read of God appearing to Abraham or working behind the scenes to foil the plans of the Pharaoh, the story of Esther never mentions God. Rather, the characters in Esther appear to be acting on
We live in a culture that wants to move faster and faster still. But, is faster always better? There are some things about going slow that you cannot get when you are moving fast. When I was serving as a youth minister, I took the youth group hiking to the top of a small mountain. At the end of the
At a time in my life when things were not like I wanted, I sat in a restaurant booth across from a friend as tears streamed down my face explaining how everything was going wrong. The holidays were around the corner. I was short on cash. I was helping other people but no one asked me if I needed help.
I’m a historian by training. It is what I do and how I think. This training orients my own spiritual formation as well. I think about the past as a way to make sense of God’s faithfulness and to consider my Christian duty as well as others’. Thinking like a historian tends to consider how we narrate our stories and
Many families enjoy re-telling the events that happened around the time that someone was born – the mad dash to the hospital, nervous pacing in the waiting room, funny names that your parents almost gave you. Luke begins his gospel by telling the story surrounding Jesus’ birth. Did you know that Jesus was born next to animals? That’s unusual isn’t
Christmas is around the corner, and for the Christian church this is the beginning of the Advent season. Advent is a season when we are reminded that God is with us. In fact, one of the names for God that we hear often during Christmastime is Emmanuel, which means: God with us. (Isaiah 7:14) However, many times we don’t feel
Many churches are currently setting up Advent wreaths to mark the weeks leading up to Christmas. The four candles that encircle the wreath illuminate the area around them as they point toward the center candle. Those outer candles relate to prophecy, Bethlehem, shepherds, and angels, while the center candle alludes to Christ. The prophecy candle represents the expectation of the
Recently, I noted someone online putting forward the idea that God blesses organizations, traditions, or denominations depending on their public positions on certain topics, or that God retracts a blessing on an organization, tradition, or denomination, if they do not issue a public position on one of a number of topics. Let’s delve into some of the assumptions here and
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