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How do you measure what is happening in a congregation? I have been here for about a year now. I was reminded of this when the "check engine" went on in my elderly car, as that is what happened when I first drove into town a year ago.

National Public Radio just ran a pair of features on the flavors of Christianity represented by the presidential and vice presidential nominees. An editor’s note affixed to both stories summarizes the theme: “Both major presidential candidates this year are Protestants… Beyond that, their faith profiles are very different.”

The whole church needs to encounter the courage and truthfulness of the fact that God created us good, to love and be loved.

Much of what Christianity has long been saying about the cross of Christ is problematic. So what is to be done about it?

We call God "Father" and "Mother" because children don't say "Parent, Parent." But what will my children call me?

Belief in the incarnation places suffering bodies within the realm of Christian responsibility.

There are so many horrific events in the news. What do we do with the tumult of feelings that rushes through us when we hear about them? How do we navigate this world of lightning-fast news and online echo chambers where we can block particular perspectives and opinions? In these charged, gut-wrenching times, how do we process information and determine what course of action might align with our values? In seminary a professor assigned “reaction/response papers.” 

When I was a kid, I was often puzzled by the way Jesus responded to people in the Gospels. From callously telling someone to “let the dead bury their own dead” to calling a Samaritan woman a dog to saying that he didn’t come to bring peace but a sword, Jesus often seemed a bit obnoxious (at worst) and enigmatic (at best). One such vexing encounter in the Gospels that irritated me as a kid was Jesus’ response to the rich young ruler in Luke 18.

The unnamed woman’s healing in this week’s Gospel reading is a story of expansion, revelation, vision widened by grace. There’s more to the story, however.

Eye in the Sky suggests a Godlike view of drone warfare. But what if we consider a different theological angle?

Ruth Everhart's book, Ruined: A Memoir, comes out today. It's a gripping story about sexual violence and looking at our theology in the midst of difficult realities.I had a chance to talk with Ruth about the value of women, what it was like to write the memoir, and how we understand God's sovereignty and power in the midst of violence. 

I’ve come here so often, an average of four days per week for a year, that my phone recognizes the Cancer Specialists Wi-Fi signal. The woman next to me, on the other side of the drywall partition, with the plum purple glasses and weathered gray hair, is sobbing. Gasps that sound like someone drowning. My phone doesn’t recognize that but I do. Her cancer, I can tell from the fresh, pink chest port wound, is a recent discovery.

Trump and the RNC platform have little to say about climate action. Yet many steps we could take are inherently conservative.

My older brother died 25 years ago. I was ten years old. I grew up with grief.

We believe Black Lives Matter. Scripture speaks of the infinite worth of ALL of humanity (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 9:6), and the Triune God distinctly created us with intentionality and purpose. God loves us in our DIFFERENCES and reveals that the Body will only find true unity in this midst of seeking the purpose of our divinely composed diversity (Revelation 5:9; Revelation 14:6). The holy writ portrays a  sovereign God as caught up in the scandal of particularity moving through the lives of the powerless from the election of Abraham, Moses, and the Hebrews out of Egypt to their Gentile neighbors in ancient Syria, Ethiopia, Persia, Egypt, and Palestine (Amos 9:7).

18th-century colonists drank beer with breakfast and continued throughout the day, with average consumption twice as high as today’s.