When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority...
You can be flawed, anxious and sometimes irritated, but don't forget that your life is the greatest company in the world. Only you can prevent her from going into decline. There are many who appreciate, admire and love you. And you don't know but there are people for...
In the crisis of our life, our words show where our souls have been feeding.
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull,...
A church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a Word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, what kind of gospel is that? Preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed do not light up the world.
The crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part...
In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare--negative capability. This...
The alligator--the chaos, the storm, the danger, the divorce, the illness, the crisis--and the human response--what you and I do in the midst of chaos--and the presence of God in chaos--these are profound issues of faith. And the stories about chaos and God and us are...
For many believers--and even communities of faith--congregational song has played an important role in shaping the content of faith and in facilitating the remembering of that faith. It has been a recurring testimony that in times of sorrow, crisis, or need, assurance...
It is my experience that in modern times the care of children, particularly those in crisis, has been abandoned by the pastor. My concern for ministry to children has been growing for a long time. My first experience in clinical pastoral education was at a children’s...