Leaving Church, by Barbara Brown Taylor, is (somewhat ironically) full of enriching meditations for the church. When she left a twenty-year career as a priest and in essence also “left church,” Brown Taylor says she was compelled to let go [...]

Do you remember Garbage Pail Kids? I never collected them, but they were a hot item growing up.  Each card character suffers from some ridiculous abnormality or terrible fate.  Take “Adam Bomb,” or “Glandular Angela,” or “Half-Nelson,” for instance.  Or,  a [...]

And now, finally, what a number of you have been waiting for…Today’s guest is missional church thinker and activist Lance Ford, who is organizing the upcoming Sentralized gathering in Kansas City, Missouri (September 27-29), in which I’ll be taking part.  He [...]

Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish” featured a piece yesterday on how radio programming initiatives are keeping alive the dying minority languages of New Zealand’s Maori peoples:  ”In the Maori community of New Zealand, for example, the combination of 21 radio stations [...]

Alan Hirsch’s latest book, The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century Church, co-authored with Tim Catchim, is on my must-read list. Apparently, Hirsch’s main point, according to Hirsch’s Books and Culture reviewer, Gregory Metzger, is this: the five-fold model [...]

I’ve just made the virtual acquaintance of Sister Jeanine Gramick, thanks to yesterday’s installment of Andrew Sullivan’s series, “Ask Sister Gramick Anything.”  Sr. Gramick may be best known for her work at the helm of an organization that she started [...]

The  “2012 Kingdom Culture” conference hosted annually by Bethel Church, in Redding, California, starts today- and I’m intrigued.  (Are any of you participating? I’d be curious to hear more about what you know or have experienced here.) I’m most intrigued [...]

“Third place.”  If it’s not my position in a race to the ice cream running neck and neck with a five-year-old and a two-year-old, what is it? Fellow saint and sinner Lance Ford has posted an enlightening article (credit: Sentralized) [...]

“I’ve got nothing against God, it’s His fan club I can’t stand!,” goes one bumper sticker.  Endless scandals, bickering, and declining membership and budgets in many denominations all point to a long, historical track record of failures to be the [...]

He showed up at our door yesterday afternoon to fix the refrigerator. (What do you get when a professor and a minister have a broken refrigerator? Answer: An appliance repairman.) The first words out of his mouth signaled he was [...]