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Is your church preparing for your stewardship campaign? Remember this: When you provide leadership in stewardship at church, you do essential work. You help people connect their money and their faith. Both money and faith are part of everyday life, and bringing them together is one of the most vital connections in the spiritual life.

Ian McFarland's book on the doctrine of creation is a book about nothing. It has a lot to say about it.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Redeemer Presbyterian Church, led by author and speaker Tim Keller, has partnered with a nondenominational Reformed seminary to form a campus in New York City in 2015....

More than 120 Muslim scholars from around the world endorsed an open letter to the “fighters and followers” of the so-called Islamic State, denouncing them as un-Islamic in the most Islamic of term...

Psychologists describe a "middle knowledge" of the reality of death. How much of this knowledge is good for us?

Jonathan Merritt writes books and articles that change people. He’s a senior writer for the Religion News Service and just last week, he won the 2014 Religion Commentary of the Year from the Religion Newswriters Association.  I had the pleasure of asking Merritt a few questions about books that have influenced him.

There’s something very refreshing about being able to laugh. It disarms the situation and takes away the power from the critic. It reminds me not to take myself so seriously. It gives me perspective on the situation. It helps me not to hate myself, because otherwise I’d be crying or drinking. Or, I’d be stuffing it down into my gut, until the toxicity becomes ulcer-sized.

I wish that I had had the foresight when I was young to have started a tally of church meetings that I attended—though I’m not sure if I would be impressed or depressed by the number. I started attending regular church meetings when I was in high school, when I was the youth group representative to the Christian Education Committee at First Parish Congregational Church in Wakefield, Massachusetts.  Here in Maine—at the local church and conference levels in the United Church of Christ—there’s a lot of talk about reducing church meetings.

Using powerful stories, Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu equip us to address deep questions about forgiveness, wholeness, and new life.

Jesus' parable of the so-called "wicked tenant farmers" is a textbook illustration—a parody, even—of the economic and political dynamics of empire.

(The Christian Science Monitor) Peggy Stevens is thinking ahead to a trip to Canobie Lake Park, the amusement park she is tak...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Protestant clergy rarely preach about mental illness to their congregations and only one-quarter of congregations have a plan in place to assist families of the mentally ill, a recent LifeWay Resea...

What would you think if you were walking or driving down the street and you saw a sign that said, “Honk Less, Love More” or “Follow Dreams, Not Crowds” or “Have a Great Day?” Would these signs make you happier, or at least more inclined to behave decently?

Often we want our churches to grow, but we're not sure what sort of tools to use.

Jean-Pierre Filiu rightly places Gaza at the center, not the margins, of Palestinian history. But he fails to let Gazans speak for themselves.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon sparked a lively debate about church, ministry, and identity. How does their book read 25 years later?

c. 2014 Religion News Service...