One month ago, an American couple herded three children into a men’s room in the Istanbul, Turkey airport. The wife visibly pregnant, they settled in for the night and texted to family members in the U.S., letting them know that their flight was being delayed indefinitely – keeping some of the details to themselves. All night the parents kept vigil
I’m going to call Martha’s the honest approach. She doesn’t stand back and say things like, “Well you must have needed another angel.” Or “It must have been your will.” She looks him right in the eye and tells him exactly what she is thinking. “You let me down. You did not do what I asked you to do. You
let’s look closer at the story of Babel. The first thing we learn is that there was only one language and one people – “now the whole earth had one language and the same words” – that ought to be a red flag for us. It ought to alert us that something isn’t right.
It is a season to weed and to water and to pluck from the vine. We are in the midst of Ordinary Time on the liturgical calendar – between Pentecost and Advent, “ordinary” sounds mundane. But if it is mundane, it can also be the beautiful kind of mundane, like a long-married couple sharing their morning coffee or a gardener
When I walk him to school, and remember the proper procedure, I ask him to teach me their prayers. It changes frequently, alighting upon virtues and visions, my wife’s butterfly spirituality passing down to our son. As he teaches me their prayer, a common refrain rolls across his lips, “Lord, help me be bold and courageous.”
This congregation has a fresh, invigorated vision of proclaiming God’s Kingdom in their hometown and around the world (including an appreciation for four-legged outreach).
I’m proud to declare that the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is my church. It’s my church of birth, it’s my church of choice, and it’s the church I love. It is known by many as “The Freedom Church,” and this I do not take lightly. Yet, while no church can ever claim to be perfect, the church must at
I love that concept, that whenever we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are committing ourselves as Christ followers and churches to fashioning foretastes of the world to come in the here and now.
A note about the following reflections from Black and Hispanic clergy: These accounts have been given by denominational leaders, academics and clergy from across Wesleyan Methodist denominations. As a white editor, I have been keenly conscious of the weight of holding these testimonies with care and respect. Content has been edited for length. As much as possible, editorial work has
How inspiring to recall that God’s Kingdom cannot be contained, and that fresh movements of the Holy Spirit continually reinvigorate gatherings of Christ followers.
Do you ever find yourself struggling with bridging the horizons from ancient to modern? Recently, I was allotted the task to preach the Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32). Realizing that this passage is difficult to understand apart from its context, I decided to expand the sermon to Matthew 21:23-32. As I was drawing things together and preparing for
As pastors we have to understand that as we serve our church, it will begin to look like us. Our shared life will rub off on each other. We will take on the DNA of that local church body and always carry it with us. And part of who we are will always stay with them. We are related after
I have known for several years that on some level behavior precedes doubt.
In other words, we don’t arrive at our shadow of doubt by objective analysis of relevant facts; instead, most of us begin to act a certain way and then circle back around and develop some doubts to substantiate that behavior.
We don’t think our way
It took a while to realize what I was missing. It does sometimes. It took sitting in a pew to allow the revelation to dawn on me. Everyone needs to be led sometimes: especially leaders. I loved pronouncing the opening line of the call to worship; I loved welcoming the faithful and the not-so-faithful to the communion table; I loved
We’ve started a sermon series entitled Intoxicated. The word comes from a misunderstanding about what was happening in the lives of the disciples when the Holy Spirit fell on them. It was such an inexplicable experience that those who were seeing the effects accused them of being drunk! But something else was going on. Jesus has promised them the Holy Spirit
When I first arrived at seminary, I was astonished at the number of Wesleyans I met. Wesleyans everywhere! Having grown up in the small but active Wesleyan denomination, I was gratified to see it represented so fully. Then, about a week into the semester, I began to realize something – all the Wesleyans I was meeting were Wesleyan, not Wesleyan.
The painting Reflections, celebrates the awesome process of changing into who we are and whose we are, God’s children, made in his image. God finds such delight in this process, especially when we reflect and acknowledge his grace within the journey.
In short, we need more Arminians with an edge. These are Arminians who understand that the claims of Calvinism and Arminianism are mutually exclusive, and they cannot both be right. They understand that there are important issues at stake and that there are large practical implications. Not the least of these is the very character and love of God. Does
David understood the important of leaving a legacy. He understood that each generation should stockpile resources for the next generation. He accepted that his own failures and inadequacies would prevent him from accomplishing everything he wanted to do during his own lifetime, but he used that fact as a motivation for the future success of those who would come after
In the church, we often are so soft about what we are doing that we can’t speak to people about concrete objectives and goals. We can’t even tell whether we are doing well because we don’t know what doing well looks like. And, my son observed, we often seem more concerned about everyone liking us than speaking what we believe.
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