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Years of experience don’t ease the journey toward a family waiting in an ICU. We pastors feel terribly inadequate, and at the same time incredibly grateful that the vocation allows us into the most intimate situations.

After the funeral, I was ready to help the boy's family find a church home closer to where they lived. Instead, they stayed with us.

You probably won’t hear Greg Laswell's songs in church. You’re more likely to catch them on the radio or in the background of a particularly intense moment of shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Glee, or The Carrie Diaries. Yet his songs animate the highs and lows of my spiritual journeys. I’ve also started using them in my U.S. religious history courses.

Vivaldi wrote his Magnificat for a choir of female orphans to sing for their supper. They were truly singing Mary's song.

If temptation were all about blatant wrongdoing, it would be far easier to avoid.

The “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda has become law. I had the chance to see God Loves Uganda, a documentary that gives part of the background of the bill, including the involvement of American evangelicals in advocating for its passage. But there’s a larger story that would provide important context—the history of colonialism in East Africa and of Anglicanism in Uganda.

After a childhood spent envying the boys on the football team, I joined my college’s rugby team. My first night I learned how to throw a tackle. More importantly, I learned how to be tackled. The idea was this: you’re going to fall. You’d might as well learn how to fall safely, so that you can stand back up.

Some church planters refer to denominations as "widget factories." A big cultural commute exists between fledgling communities and church hierarchies.

Jesus’ transfiguration is a mystery that defies a straightforward explanation. I find that instead of clarifying anything about his unique nature, it only adds more confusion.

Theo Hobson’s ambitious book traces the historical emergence and fate of liberal theology in the modern period. He defends the “liberal state” and the way good liberal Christianity is allied with it.