Here’s the simple but just a little troubling question I’ve been wrestling with since participating in Luther Seminary’s recent Rethinking Faith Formation conference: Given how many other groups and movements legitimately lay claim to our allegiance today, can the Church ever expect to exert the level of influence in our lives that it once did? Let me explain: in medieval times the Church was everything and everywhere – involved in politics, in control of the banks, the arbiter of salvation (or damnation), the final authority on all matters of domestic and public life. The omnipresence of the Church has been declining for...

As part of a grant project studying vibrant preaching, I had the chance recently to read over a) the results of a survey taken by more than a thousand people who regularly listen to sermons and b) the in-depth interviews given by about two hundred more. The results have been fascinating and I’m only just beginning to process them. But one thing already stands out: People want to understand why the biblical stories they hear read at church matter. Desperately. More than that, they want what happens on Sunday to matter throughout the week. When I processed this observation with a group of preachers participating in the study, one voiced the...