This podcast is an excellent resource as you think about worship this Memorial Day weekend. I learned so much as Derrick Weston talked with Amy Blumenshine. She has incredible wisdom as she navigates a pastoral response to service and honoring soldiers when we have ethical problems with war.
In October, a
newly formed Right to Life group sponsored a week-long conference, entitled
"Abortion and Feminism," on the campus of Yale Divinity School. The
pro-choice posters posted by the Students for Reproductive Justice made it
clear that seminarians are not of one mind on the issue.
Unless you're Pentecostal, you've probably never run or jumped or worked up a sweat in church. But whatever your tradition, your church has some kind of worship calisthenics.
Marva Dawn excels at demonstrating how good worship and good liturgy meet the very needs that drive us to their substitutes. The genuine splendor of worship can free us from our preoccupation with consumerism, our addictive behaviors and our anxieties. At worship one does nothing more nor less than to give oneself fully to God.
On the Shelf
All Things Shining
Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
When I sit in church on Sunday mornings, I sometimes look
around at the other congregants and ask myself, "Why are these people here? Why
did they choose to come to church?" Some people prefer staying at home to
leisurely read the Sunday paper, or go out for a relaxed Sunday brunch. Why
have these people given up their precious spare time to be here?
Too much writing about the arts and Christianity is apologetic, explaining why the church should be concerned about artistic expression. Within that category is a lot of writing that voices high-minded generalities about "good art" and "bad art" and about who should and should not be making art.
I’m not much of a Rick Warren fan, but I’ve always appreciated his best-known catchphrase: "It’s not about you."
The evangelical worship life I grew up with was chock-full of “I”
language, with less roo
