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Should we celebrate that parks are cleaner, that creativity is blossoming, that local business is thriving? Or should we mourn that the most vulnerable members of our city are quietly being forced out of their homes as rents shoot up and homes become less and less affordable? Can we do both?

Are we using a season designed for contemplation of the holy to alleviate our own insecurities about our bodies, our work ethic, our personal health? And if so, is it time, as we’ve done with Christmas, to take stock of what the “true meaning” of Lent really is?

Congregations may look like organizations in which market-based strategies apply, but these strategies are never going to capture the full range of what they do or how they can best be supported.

As I see it, morality is at the center of God’s heart; it always has been and always will be. If so, we need to rediscover its beauty and power.

This question haunts me: Will we surrender our third third to Jesus? If we won’t, our broken world will lose; sadly, so will we. 

Against the backdrop of glittering white twinkle lights strung along the living room walls and quiet piano music played by a pianist I’d hired the day before, the painful story spilled forth. 

When we reject God and follow our own purposes, ugliness results. These ugly stories hold up a mirror to show us how sin looks

What do we do when our culture provides us with a counter-narrative to the one in Scripture, one that, on the surface, appears far more alluring, satisfying, and fulfilling than the one that Scripture offers?

The annual practice of setting New Year’s resolutions has taught me that my sins and failings, even those that come before January 12, will not be the end of me. In Jesus Christ and through the Spirit, God is more faithful than I have yet to imagine.

Every Christ follower has the potential to be a multiplying agent for the kingdom.

What may look like a simple move in the search of a good outcome—when the moral stakes are so high—will almost certainly have profound unintended consequences.

We don’t often think of Advent as looming. But here is a time of darkness, preceding the Redeemer’s birth into a dark and cold night.

If the Holy Spirit holds the cosmos together (every facet of every human being’s biological, relational, educational, social, and economic life), and if holding means nearness, then surely every time a human being wakes up to God, that moment is a remembering of a presence that’s always been there.

Living among people whose suffering is relentless, heartbreaking, mind-numbing, has changed me. I am hungrier for heaven’s healing than I have ever been.

Songs of praise often celebrate God taking us from our hurts; songs of lament recognize God with us in our hurts.

The heartfelt question was posed to me in the waning moments of an evening filled with the easy camaraderie that forms between those walking a pathway of similar joys and sorrows. 

Psalm 137 is, for me, the prayer in the Bible that most accurately expresses the extreme rage that comes with the experience or observation of the world’s worst abuses

Does legalized cannabis help me to better love and serve God and my neighbor?

Deciding to take it all on doesn’t convey a healthy trust in God’s provision, or trust in others to be the elbows while I focus on being the spleen (to stretch a biblical metaphor).

To me the five points of Calvinism articulated in the Canons of Dort summarize some wonderfully assuring teachings from Scripture.

A re-think of the role and place of servanthood and leadership in the church is long overdue.

When I first met Attie, I was a sleep-deprived mess of nerves and disappointment.

In one way or another, it seems Christians keep coming back to the question What makes the church the church right here, right now?