So what if all the decline our congregations and denominations have experienced in recent decades has little to do with a failure of leadership (what congregational leaders fear) or changes in theological or political stances (what more conservative church leaders assert) or a degenerate or disinterested generation of believers (what people in the pew too often feel) or with any of the other things we usually attribute it to. What if the decline is simply the result of a massive cultural shift? That is, what if we now live in a world where the emerging generation a) has tons of options for ways to think about and make sense of their lives,...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Money, politics, and religion, oh my! Yes, here is a passage that contains three of the things people aren’t supposed to talk about in polite company. (Just add sex and you’d have people running out the doors!) But while the temptation will be the flee to other texts this Sunday or, worse, preach a thematic sermon with little reference to the actual passage at hand, I think that if we can stay with the particulars of this text we’ll discover a lot that is worthy of our consideration. Let me begin, though, with a question: why is it, actually, that we’re not supposed to talk about money, politics, and...

It’s Friday, the end of a long week, and time for a mental health break and a little humor via Ellen Degeneres and a video of the reaction of a four-year old to the news that he would soon have another new sibling. After watching the first video, including Ellen’s interview with him, you can also watch when Ellen shares a surprise with him and is mom. Heart-warming indeed! Have a great weekend!     If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click the title at the top of the post in order to watch the...

Yesterday I posted a video about the devastating effect media messages about beauty can have on all of us, but particularly our youth. Part of the challenge, as I suggested yesterday, is that our kids are so media-saturated – far more than they are media-savvy – that it’s difficult to provide a filter. Which means that we need to counter the voices of the culture that regularly seek to make them feel inadequate with messages about their inherent worth and dignity. And this, when you think of it for even a few seconds, is something that should come naturally to us. We proclaim, after all, that we and all people are children of God,...