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EssaysReviews

Bringing Balance to the Missional Church Movement

As is felt in the pews on Sunday mornings and reported statistically, the American church is in decline. While this raises a lot of anxiety among church leaders, there are resources and movements attempting to change this trend. One of the most compelling movements is the missional-church movement. However, the word “missional” is so ubiquitous that it can be difficult to discern what people mean when they use it. One helpful tool for understanding is the book The Permanent Revolution.…
September 1, 2018
MagazineReviews

Abraham Kuyper and the Immigration Debate

Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear, by Matthew Kaemingk CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY AND MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN AN AGE OF FEAR MATTHEW KAEMINGK WM.B EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO., 2018 $28 (PAPERBACK) 352 PAGES On January 27, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. Refugee Admission program and banning admission to immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. President Trump’s actions reveal a growing tension among many European aend North American nations between the desire to…
June 30, 2018
Inside OutMagazine

Falling into the Earth

In Chapter 12 of the Gospel of John, Jesus announces, “The hour has come,” and with these words the focus of this gospel shifts. Knowing that his hour of death is near, Jesus turns his attention to his disciples and tries to explain to them the meaning of his life and imminent death. Jesus begins with this striking image: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much…
June 30, 2018
As We See It

This Is about Race

I sat in a room recently with moms and dads who learned about how they can prepare their families in the event of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid. I learned about the importance of having a plan – collecting documents and birth certificates, authorizing someone to pick children up from school, ensuring children born in the United States  are registered in the country of their parents’ birth so they aren’t rendered stateless should the family have to relocate. I…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Gardensong

Hosea 2:7 “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” – Jacque Lacan “ut operaretur eum” – Voltaire’s Candide Desire is taking a picture of the moon. The trip to faraway that made you miss your bed, an apple gone soft. The way summer fades the new drapes pooling by the window-pane. How pain feels so much like suspense. And I, thumbing my past like an old brochure, a native who…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Of Aliens and Embassies

American visitors to the Holy Land often “run where Jesus walked,” a Palestinian friend from Bethlehem likes to say. One need only watch the crush of tourists pouring out of buses at the Church of the Nativity to observe the pattern: place one tentative foot into the West Bank, check the landmark off the list after superficial engagement and zip back to the sunny places on the other side of the checkpoint with nary a glance at Bethlehem as it…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Distance

1,284.5 miles: The distance from my front door to Charlottesville, Virginia. In the second weekend of August, I woke to the sound of a crop-duster plane zooming over our family’s tent in the middle of a Minnesota state park about a half-hour from my home. We were on our annual family end-of-summer camping trip. I lay there for a minute on the air mattress and reached over to my shoe, where I’d stuck my phone for the night. I drowsily…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Let Those Who Have Eyes See

On July 6, 2016, Officer Jeronimo Yanez killed motorist Philando Castile while Castile was belted in the seat of his car, accompanied by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter. On June 16, 2017, Yanez was found not guilty on one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. The 12-person jury was asked to decide if the prosecution had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Yanez had been culpably negligent. In a rare…
April 30, 2018
Inside Out

What Heaven Is and Is Not

Read Luke 23:32-43. Heaven is pretty easy to come by these days. Evidently, you can find it in a kiss, at the beach or in a piece of chocolate cake. But what is heaven, really? Even when I ask other Christians this question, I get rather elaborate responses not too far from the things noted above: the warm, even romantic embrace of loved ones; an eternal round of golf on the back nine of Augusta; long coffees with friends; fishing…
October 31, 2017