It’s dangerous to live your life with a past focus, with a two-dimensional Jesus, because you may end up following a tradition instead of following Jesus, God’s living Word.
Recently Wesleyan Accent Editor Elizabeth Glass Turner chatted with Rev. Zach Szmara, the founder of one of the first immigration legal clinics within a church building, about sanctuary, immigration law, and cross-cultural ministry at home. Rev. Szmara is the Lead Pastor of The Bridge in Logansport, Indiana, a congregation within The Wesleyan Church. He is the National Director of Immigrant Connection – a growing
Jesus wasn’t about hanging out on the “healthy” side of the river, the side of the “haves.”
It’s happened again and again. Do they give out “Webby Awards” for“Best Social Networking Campaign Aimed at Disenfranchised Young Men Searching for Meaning and Manhood in a Post-Religious Context”? In the 90’s, radicalization looked like bored, angry, white, oddball suburban teenagers shooting up their classmates as they latched onto whatever Nihilistic philosophy made sense of their bullied, middle-class ennui. Now
It is better to stop worrying about the results of our evangelizing and instead worry about whether we have truly made the gospel known in our relationships with others.
Deep and authentic faith is meaningful; but can be costly, challenging, even frightening.
What is the better place? As seen in the last post, the three most popular sketches of the Christian “better place”—heaven-centered, human-centered, and world-centered—have been various soteriological attempts to depict both our hope and mission. (Soteriology, as you may remember, refers in theology to the theology of salvation.) However, as John C. Nugent argues in his book Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World
If you reflect on your spiritual walk, how do Peter’s various responses to Jesus resonate with your experience?
There are some things that I know I should believe with my head, but I struggle because I don’t experience them in my heart.
Go to the Limits of Your Longing -Rainer Maria Rilke God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows
Events in the United States often impact the rest of the world. Though World Methodist Evangelism is a global organization working through a network of 80 million Methodist Wesleyans in over 130 countries; I feel it is important to speak out on the current unrest unfolding in the US. I have been trying to mentally and emotionally process what has
There is a reckoning unfolding that we would avoid if we could – unless we are one of the people who have been crying out for it, praying for it, watching the horizon for it. But the people who pray for revival and the people who pray for reckoning aren’t always the same. In the open air of summer camp
A Note From The Editor: Recently I asked clergy members from several Wesleyan Methodist denominations in the United States about what it’s been like coping with a pandemic. Ministers in other parts of the world have experienced these dynamics before, and pastors a hundred years ago went through this in America. For many church leaders in the U.S., these have
Pastors and denominational leaders face tough decisions right now. The Christian faith is inherently embodied; we gather, we meet, we celebrate the Incarnation – the Word Made Flesh. For millenia, we’ve celebrated the Eucharist, finding Christ’s presence in the tangible – wine and bread, a burning grace. The Christian faith is also inherently self-sacrificial; we mend, we serve, we search
It was after Easter. The disciples were told to wait for Jesus in Galilee. But did they have to wait by sitting and doing nothing? “I’m going fishing,” said Peter. And why not? It made perfect sense. Fishing was their livelihood. They may as well make some money while waiting. So they all piled into a boat and shoved off.
If you are you struggling to make decisions about policy and how to communicate those decisions to your church during this chaotic time, you are not alone. In this new normal of remote church, much consumes our day-to-day activities. It is difficult to plan and communicate future steps.
Here are five daily meditations on wisdom, bite-sized and brief enough to fit between Zoom calls. Each contains a timely word of wisdom. Breathe these in during a moment of solitude, with housemates, or as a family.
I know a man who works at a large, warehouse style home-improvement store. He shared with me a story about how to help people find what they are looking for. It seems that there is a sign in the employee break room that says: “No Pointing.” The message to the store employees is that when customers ask the location of
Being silent is a skill we can develop.
Recently I discovered that a very effective way to learn the game of chess is to begin by playing without the Queen. Because the Queen is the strongest chess piece, players often lean heavily on her for their overall strategy. Learning to play without her, however, forces you to recognize the value of all the other pieces on board, and
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