Why Ministry? by Andy Stoddard

You can read all kinds of studies out there showing that ministry is isolating.  You see the stats that pastors experience burnout in staggering numbers.  I remember sitting in class and hearing that many of the people to your right and your left will not be there in a few years.  I remember laughing and thinking to myself, oh, not us.  We

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Differently Abled In The Church: “Life Unworthy Of Life” & The Kingdom Of God by Elizabeth Glass Turner

What does your church do with people who are differently abled, disabled, mentally handicapped, handicapped, or crippled? (All of those terms have been used in my thirty-odd trips around the sun.) Do you have someone in your church who comes in a wheelchair? Do you have training for teachers and nursery workers, preschool workers and children’s ministers on how to engage kids

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Charlottesville: Do They Really Not See? by Elizabeth Glass Turner

Today is the day after. The day after a young black man got beat up in a parking garage, the scene caught by a quick photojournalist (I can’t imagine how sore he is). The day after a stunned mom learned from reporters that her son had been arrested for plowing his car into a crowd of pedestrians (she was in complete shock).

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Letting God Continue Your Education by Edgar Bazan

When we think about the story of Creation in the Christian faith, we typically do it within the context of Genesis, the story of the past and how things came to be. One may think this creating process was settled at the beginning of time, and that God transitioned from being an entrepreneur to a manager, or worse, a mere aloof supervisor.   However, if we pay close

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When You See A Turtle On A Fencepost by Carolyn Moore

Everybody goes through seasons of spiritual “stuckness,” days or weeks or sometimes even months when you just can’t seem to get out of your spiritual bad mood. If you’ve had that experience or are there now, you’re not alone. This is a normal part of the spiritual journey. It is not a sign of weakness; to the contrary, it may well

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If You Can’t Say Nothin’ Good by Andy Stoddard

Sometimes when we read scripture we wonder, “what can this passage be saying to me in this moment?  How can I understand it?  What may God want me to do with this truth at this time in my life?”  Sometimes it can be hard to understand, hard to deal with.  And then there are other passages that are so simple they leap off the

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Find Your Wings by Carrie Carter

I didn’t cry when our boys went to kindergarten.  I didn’t cry when our boys went to high school.  I didn’t even cry when our oldest graduated from high school.  Maybe that’s why the flood of emotion that washed over me a couple days before we took our oldest to college completely caught me off guard. Even now, as we’re

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The Nature Of God When The Sun Goes Out And The Rain Comes Down by Elizabeth Glass Turner

Eerie.   Unnatural.  Awe-inspiring.  Within a short span, we went from sharing photos of uncanny eclipse shadows to videos of hungry floodwaters rising.  America stood still while time turned in on itself and twilight became midday, calling out confused crickets while the sun went out and summer heat cooled. We haven’t found a way to control the moon. It’s not customizable. There’s

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Hate: Confusing Holiness With Hierarchy by Carolyn Moore

Let’s talk about hate.  In the first few verses of the Bible, we meet our God in his Trinitarian wholeness. The Father creates, the Son speaks, the Spirit hovers. This Trinitarian God partners within himself in the work of creation. You can sense the single-mindedness — the energy flowing within himself creating goodness. There is no sense of hierarchy here. In fact, a hierarchy

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