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Category: Ministry

  • How to Get Out of the Inner Circle: Ministry with the Poor

    “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” [Philippians 2:5-6, NRSV]  This, I believe, is one of… →

  • Love Stinks (But it Also Wins): A Delayed Review of Rob Bell

    The problem with love is it’s easy to sentimentalize.  O heck, there are many problems with love, sentimentalizing being the least of them.  Love distorts our vision.  Love lets us down.  Love keeps us in relationships we should have left.  Love is a knife to the heart and a passionate madness.  Yes, love is a… →

  • Movies, Culture & Faith

    I periodically write for FaithLink, the United Methodist Publishing House’s faith-and-current-events curriculum.  My FaithLink essay on Movies, Culture & Faith just got picked up by the great Ministry Matters site.  Just in time for the Golden Globes! http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8676/movies-culture-and-faith →

  • How to Know Your Mission Field: Adapting with Jacob Armstrong

    Jacob Armstrong, founding pastor of Providence Church in Mt. Joliet, Tennessee, offered a provocative and helpful workshop on evangelism during the 5 Talent Academy in Virginia last October.  Provocative enough that I bought his book, The New Adapters: Shaping Ideas to Fit Your Congregation [Abingdon, 2015].  In an occasional series, I’m going to take a look at… →

  • The Most-Read of 2017: A Heartlands Retrospective

    2017 began with a quaint and quixotic belief that one more blog might be helpful in addressing the Great Divide.  Post-election I was casting about for a way to explore this strange, new world we all seemed to be living in.  Were we really as divided as we seemed?  Had we forgotten how to talk… →

  • Considering Our Hearts (& the Future of the UMC): A Review of The Anatomy of Peace

    Let’s get this out of the way first: If Dan Brown wrote a book about conflict resolution it would come out looking something like The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict.  If that sounds like an endorsement to you, you’ll love this book.  If, like me, you threw The DaVinci Code across the… →

  • God, love, God, love: The Winn Collier Interview Concludes (3 of 3)

    In previous segments of this interview with Winn Collier we talked small towns, small churches, and his use of letters to tell the story of Granby Presbyterian Church, the fictional congregation at the heart of Collier’s new book.  Love Big. Be Well.:Letters to a Small-Town Church is a big-hearted, hopeful book that celebrates what Christian… →

  • How to Make Your Church Inefficient: The Winn Collier interview continues (2 of 3)

    In the first part of my interview with Winn Collier, pastor of All Souls Charlottesville and author of Love Big. Be Well.: Letters to a Small-Town Church, we talked about his decision to set his novel in a small town.  We also talked about the use of letters as a way to tell the story… →

  • The Lure of Small Towns: The Heartlands Interview with Winn Collier – (1 of 3)

    Winn Collier’s new book, Love Big. Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church, is a generous celebration of the potential of church.  In my review I noted that it is a gentle, human love story between a pastor and his congregation told in the form of letters written to the church over the course of… →

  • Heartlands Best Reads of 2017:#5 The Crucifixion

    Fleming Rutledge is having a long-overdue moment in the wake of her 2015 book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ.  I finally finished it in 2017, qualifying it for this list, and gushed about it in my review, (which you can access through the title link in the previous sentence). Rutledge sees her book as… →