The (New and Improved!) Church Calendar

At the recent news of a famous minister’s fall into the sin of adultery, two laments immediately surfaced: 1) grief over the stain on Christ’s name, the damage done to spouses and children, and the harm done to the church; and 2) a predictable chorus of Christian voices recommending a foolproof remedy [...]

Many lament the vast diversity of Protestant denominations on the American landscape: Why cannot we Christians agree more often? Denominations allegedly undermine the unity of the church. Let me suggest it is not denominations that undermine the unity of the church, but rather the way in which most Americans relate to church in the first […]

Individualism is the problem. Community is the solution. That's what they are saying. First the philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, psychologists, and theologians were saying it. Now I hear pastors, church leaders, and impressionable young seminarians saying it. Individualism is what bedevils culture and church both; community is what will save them. Last Thanksgiving I was […]

For good or for ill, we live in a postmodern age. Among the many facets of this paradigm shift are a suspicion of order and objectivity, truth and reason, tradition and institutions; and the church has often devolved into this very institutionalism: with its rigid and distant authority structures, its attachment to traditions, its passion […]