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c. 2013 Religion News Service...

As the president of DIAKONIA World Federation, I had come to Fiji to make a presentation at the DIAKONIA Asia-Pacific conference....

This is almost unfathomable. I lived in Tornado Alley during my teenage years, but they were quiet years for tornadoes. Honestly, I never took them seriously. Teenagers are invincible, after all. Whenever the subject came up we’d make jokes about trailer parks. It was classist privilege—I know that now, wrapped in a candy coating of “it couldn’t happen to me.” It could.

I enjoyed Michelle Boorstein's piece of reporting on M. Div. students who aren't headed for parish ministry. She details how some seminarians seek to be ministers of a sort as part of their calling to other vocations; she also touches on the challenges of post-Christendom pastoring and the need for more flexible and affordable paths through seminary.

New today from the Century: MaryAnn McKibben Dana on the tornado in Oklahoma, Beth Felker Jones on the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, more.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University confirms what we already knew: Yes, distraction does make us stupider. The little red flag at the bottom of my computer screen is not a harmless little reminder that I am not alone in the world. It is a constant invitation not to finish a thought.

Diehards may not like Lizzie Bennet Diaries' changes to Austen. But the fun lies in considering the choices involved in cultural translation.

c. 2013 Religion News Service DHAKA, Bangladesh (RNS) Just two more months, the daughter promised her mother by telephone, then she’d be home for good....

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

c. 2013 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (RNS) Each year 90,000 parents in the U.S. confront the profound suffering that follows the death of a child or adolescent....

Back in the dark ages of the 20th century, I remember an ad for the Yellow Pages that urged, “Let your fingers do the walking.” Now that texting has become the preferred means of communication, it seems our fingers actually do the talking. I’ve been thinking about the complexity of communication with God, especially the challenge of praying at times when words are hard to come by. In response to such a dilemma, Paul essentially tells the Romans to let the Spirit do the talking.

"I feel like a Hospice nurse," I sighed as I set down my bags. I had so many funerals in my small congregation that I had little time for anything other than caring for the dying. 

New today from the Century: Will Willimon on interfaith marriage, Carol Howard Merritt on getting outside the church's doors, more.

Forty-two percent of U.S. marriages are interfaith. Naomi Schaefer-Riley convinced me that this is one of the biggest stories in religious life.

We youth ministers have often tried to make our ministries cool enough to compete. But every teen knows that the church is not cool.

c. 2013 Religion News Service WILMINGTON, N.C. (RNS) Amanda Holowaty didn’t need God to get married. She just needed her husband Mike....

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

Somewhere in my queue of non-time-sensitive articles to write—yes, it’s been there a while—is one on the history and practice of making theologically significant changes to traditional American songs. Not just line-level edits like neutering/diversifying gendered language or using “love” in place of “wrath.” I mean re-imagining songs in a thoroughgoing way, while also preserving much of the existing imagery and language patterns. (I posted some time ago about one historical example.) I write songs and play traditional music, but I haven’t actually tried this approach myself.

Not long ago I went to visit a woman who had just entered hospice care. I've known her family for several years. I used to visit her with her husband and give them communion pretty regularly....

“People who are experiencing homelessness are people. They are not extras in a movie about you.”...