Evangelicals generally insist that “the meaning and purpose of life is to have a personal relationship with Jesus.” That’s how a Methodist pastor I was

“How much should we pay the pastor?” The annual dance around this question at the local church is often difficult and confrontational. Everybody involved hopes

During the counter-culture years in the late 1960s an angry man bluntly accused me of turning my back on the church. That’s how he interpreted

from Immanuel xxiii Mud-splotched, chiggered, thorn-matted hair and beard, naked, a scurried, spidery- crawl on all fours, snarls, bellows, less human the more they heard:

Americans are not comfortable with their nation being associated with the term “empire.” Despite its substantial numbers of troops and governing power in Afghanistan and

It is only human nature to grip too tightly and compress the certainties [of the Christian faith] into too-limited, too-simple formulations. Part of us wants

One of my colleagues retired this spring. It was a sad day both for me and for the congregation we served together. I saw more

By almost any reckoning, it was a tough summer. Here in the Midwest it was also a very hot, dry summer with seven times more

The phone call interrupted the weekly text study I host for pastoral colleagues. The female caller identi- fied herself as Gretchen Johnson, the wife of