For the last several days, I have been participating in the Toronto Preaching Festival, sponsored by the Lester Randall Preaching Fellowship and a number of local congregations. It’s been a marvelous event, and I highly recommend it to folks both north and south of the 49th parallel. One of the speakers yesterday mentioned Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian minister and author who wrote what I still think is the finest book on preaching ever written. Titled simply Telling the Truth, it’s subtitle is as telling as it is evocative: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. It’s a remarkable book, who lyrical prose, deep insights,...

This past weekend, I listened to an interview of Ian Knauer, author of The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food. Knauer got his start in the “food business” by testing recipes for Gourmet Magazine. What was interesting was that Gourmet hired him not for what he knew about cooking, but what he didn’t know. As Knauer explains: I had not been to culinary school, which is the reason I got the job. I was an avid home cook — I loved to cook from magazines and cookbooks — but I wasn’t trained. That was important to them because they wanted someone who would cook like a home cook.   The reason that I was...

When is the last time you heard a sermon on depression? Or for that matter heard anything about depression or other mental illnesses even mentioned in a sermon? I ask because I read this morning of the death of Rick and Kay Warren’s son Matthew of an apparent suicide. Matthew, 27 years old, had long suffered from bi-polar disorder and, as part of that, suffered from intense periods of depression that included suicidal impulses. The Warrens’ response to this heart-breaking tragedy has been forthright and faithful at a time when most of us would want only to huddle together in grief. My heart breaks for them even as I admire their grace...

Creativity is in as high demand now as perhaps it ever has been. And I don’t just mean in marketing a product better or preaching a more interesting sermon. I mean that we need creative parents to raise healthy children in an increasingly complex world. We need creative political leaders to help move us beyond partisan gridlock to solve serious problems. We need creative business leaders who can run successful businesses while also putting the larger community and society along side of shareholders as persons to whom they are accountable. We need creative religious leaders who can help us imagine how faith speaks to us in a relentlessly...