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What’s It Going to Take to Fix and Free the UMC?
Warning: United Methodist inside baseball ahead. One of the strongest selling points for the One Church Plan, (and one that I’ve made), is that it takes off the table the contentious, divisive debate over LGBTQ inclusion and allows us to focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world—the stated mission →
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How are You Going to Tell the Story of Your Ministry? 3 Questions
“How are you going to tell the story of what God is doing in your ministry?” It’s often the forgotten question in planning, but it may be one of the most crucial. Failing to tell the story in a compelling way often leads to confusion about the mission, apathy, financial struggles, dispirited volunteers, and gingivitis. →
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Silence, Poetry & the Salvation of Seamus Heaney
A Review of Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light The poet Seamus Heaney paused in the middle of dinner and leaned over to make a confession to Christian Wiman, who was, at the time, the editor of Poetry magazine. Knowing Wiman to be a Christian not only in name, Heaney admitted that he “felt caught between →
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Eating Spinach with Mr. Wesley
One of my great unfinished reading projects is The Works of John Wesley. A long row of books from the series lines one of my shelves these days holding the collected works of the principal founder of Methodism including sermons, journal entries, and minutes of the first conferences. This week I received Volume 32: Medical →
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O the Stories We Could Tell!
What if we ran out of stories? It doesn’t seem like we’re any danger of that. Netflix announced earlier this year that it was going to spend $8 billion on original content in 2018. Other media outlets are increasing their output. Even amateurs with a smartphone are producing YouTube series. Our appetite for stories doesn’t →
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In Praise of Bad Writing: David Bentley Hart’s New Testament
The New Testament, as translated by the influential Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, is bad. But that’s what makes it such a good read for Christians who need their settled understandings tweaked. Hart’s new translation doesn’t strive for literary heights. He has an ear for beautiful language, something that comes through in all of his →
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Bears and Birds and Cooperative Ministry
Loneliness is a bear. No one wants to feel unsupported, unheard, or unloved. You would think, in a world of so many new ways to connect, that loneliness would not be a problem. But Instagram, it turns out, is no answer to the human condition. Churches—especially churches in rural communities—often experience their own kind →
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When Flo (and Other Storms of Life) are Raging
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. —Isaiah 43:2 As I write this, it looks like the Eastern Shore will be spared the worst of Hurricane Florence, (or Flo, as I’ve come to call her this week). I’m praying for the people →
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When Angels First Trod the Earth: A Review of Philip Jenkins’ Crucible of Faith
It was 113 degrees when I was at Qumran a few weeks ago. Set up on a ridge near the Dead Sea, the site is unforgiving—no escape from the sun, salt flats and barren wilderness in every direction, a claustrophobic gift shop and lunch room packed with tourists who never seem to make it to →
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Small Churches Can Plan for a Healthy Future
I like my doctor. Even with all the needles and probes, I trust that she’s using the information she gleans through my brief discomforts to tell me something I need to hear. But I don’t always pay attention. For several years we had a little ritual over one persistent health issue: “Your cholesterol is high.” →
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Heartlands 