The benefits and challenges of women’s ministry in the age of bestsellers, viral blog posts, and inspirational conferences. The most influential women’s leader at your church may be someone who has never stepped inside its sanctuary. It may be someone your pastor has never even heard of. “If you had to ask, ‘Who's Jen Hatmaker?’ …
Despite our best efforts to understand his ways, he won’t be bound by our tidy notions of divine etiquette. About 25 years ago, while neck-deep in my seminary training, I set my sights on a rather high goal: I’d learn the Book of Psalms by heart. Not in a year. Not even in five years. …
3,200-mile walk a holy crusade for campaign finance reform A 90-year-old great-grandmother, suffering from arthritis and emphysema, has completed a 14-month, 3,200-mile (5100km) walk across the United States in a holy crusade for the reform of politicians’ massive spending in election campaigns. Doris Haddock, known affectionately as Granny D, claims that the very soul of …
Growing old is not what it used to be. For millions of retirees, that may actually be good news. Pat Poole felt a mix of relief and uncertainty once he decided to retire from his sales management job at Halliburton at the end of March. An Oklahoma Sooners football fan and an avid golfer, Poole …
But The Pilgrim’s Progress teaches us how to brawl with Apollyon. This article was adapted from episode two of The Way to Glory. Each week on The Way to Glory, we take a fresh look at a character from The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan's 300-year-old masterwork. Subscribe now in iTunes, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. How …
N. T. Wright suggests Jesus would disagree with the British government. Christian scholars in UK, US, and Middle East weigh in. N. T. Wright, the esteemed theologian and former Anglican bishop, recently offered brief reflections on the case of Shamima Begum—the British teen now seeking to return home after joining ISIS in 2015—in a letter …
Science seeks to fix aging and death. But a Christian vision of the good life might actually embrace them. A preacher’s kid growing up in the Bible Belt, Micah Redding had a particular view of the physical world and God’s work in it. Singing popular hymns like “This World is Not My Home” and “I’ll …
Gen Z’s digital natives bring followers along for the experience. “I think what I learned can be summed up like this: I can either live missionally, or live for nothing,” read an Instagram caption posted by Max Park, one of 7,000 young adults who attended the Cross Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, at the start of …
The tradition is largest in the US but today has a strong international presence. How did that happen? For the past four days, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church has been reexamining its doctrines on human sexuality. From Christianity Today’s report from yesterday: The United Methodist Church (UMC) voted Tuesday to maintain its …
Can it be said of us that we surprise others by the sympathy and compassion we extend toward to the gay and lesbian community? What would John Wesley have said about this debate in the church? Last Spring the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States, met for its quadrennial ten-day …