The term theological education brings to mind formal study. But people's deepest convictions about God and their deepest stirrings of faith are often formed at an early age.
Working in the shop gave bone and muscle to my pastoral identity. But it also taught me to anesthetize anxiety with long hours, to work out of fear of failing.
It is helpful to identify the formative moments in one's life.
Formation in faith does not happen by accident. It happens when churches puts commitment and creativity into the process and believe that the Holy Spirit is sure to show up.
Instead of fretting about worship style, perhaps we should be more concerned about scale. For all its extravagance, much worship today seems curiously trivial, inward and downsized.
Not long ago, European religious cinema thrived. Now, religion typically appears in films only as a problem--and the solution to that problem is usually liberated sexuality.
Twain’s sorrows
Twain wearied of lecture tours and struggled with guilt over his absence when two of his daughters died. In his final years, the public seemed to want Twain himself more than his books.
How should we live?
No one has done more than N.T. Wright to make the broad sweep of the scriptural narrative speak vividly to laypeople--while challenging the academy by pressing profound motifs as far as they can go.
The Fighter
Boxing movies are hardly ever about boxing. This one's real subject is the pull of family.