Lawrence Wood
Face-to-screen learning: Seminaries go online
The idea that students will reside on a campus and attend classes at specified times seems increasingly quaint.
Called but not ordained: The need for lay pastors
For the sake of discretion, call him Hank—just don’t tell him that he’s not a real pastor. He has been serving churches for 30 years and has never been busier than he is today....
The Art Student's War
You can take people out of Detroit—in fact, that’s happening more and more—but it seems you can’t take Detroit out of artists who know what to do with large...
Bridge work: Eboo Patel, interfaith activist
In 1998, when he was 22, Eboo Patel founded the Interfaith Youth Core (spelled “core” because it seeks to be the heart of a larger movement)...
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Henry Ford never did things by halves....
CC recommends
Russo is an old-fashioned teller of tales who can make you burst out laughing....
The first deacon: Mark 1:29-39
The Christian church was born with Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.
False prophet or true?: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28
True prophets have a different bottom line than false ones, but that doesn’t make them any easier to recognize.
Father and Son: Finding Freedom
Walter Wangerin has written many beloved books, but perhaps none more affecting than this one....
Tying knots: A pastor's wedding adventures
The bride wore a white dress with pearls, a veil and a big red nose. The groom had a rainbow wig, and instead of patent leather shoes, floppy brogues as big as boats, which were coming apart at the toes. All around them a raucous band of clowns held forth on tubas and big bass drums. “Do you, Gilbert, take Glenna to be your wife?” “I sure do.” “Do you, Glenna, take this clown to be your husband?” “I do,” she smiled, and someone honked a horn.
God at Work
Some books simply cannot be written because the subjects are too large. Who could read a history of Fridays?...
Acceptable words: Psalm 19; Luke 4:14-21
He was not the young man they had known before. They were sizing him up, as people in small towns will do, when he stood up in the synagogue to read from the prophet Isaiah. He read a fantastic and otherworldly passage, plainly not about Nazareth, but about some other place. And then he startled them all: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Was he talking about them? Or himself? And what did he mean by proclaiming right there, in his hometown, “the acceptable year of the Lord”?
Wedding gifts: John 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
What do you get for the bride who has everything? It’s unusual these days for a couple not to have all they need before they marry. They don’t need dishes or kitchenware—unless they hope to upgrade. Their grandparents may have started out in a small apartment with a used stove and an icebox, but the 21st-century couple already owns a Viking stove and Sub-Zero refrigerator.
Signs and sounds: Psalm 29; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Have you not known? Have you not heard? asks Isaiah. Those with ears to hear, let them hear, says Jesus. Day to day pours forth speech, says the psalmist, but God’s speech is pitched in such a register that many cannot distinguish it from silence.
Dressing up: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Colossians 3:12-17
Once a year, having waited to the very end of December, my wife and I dress up. Some people wait a lifetime to start living, but fortunately for us, New Year’s Eve intervenes every year. With mortality staring us right in the face, we get around to that date we should have had months ago. Rexene looks absolutely stunning in a cocktail dress. (How many times does a pastor’s wife get to wear a cocktail dress?)
Tutu's story
Americans have sometimes seen the campaign against South African apartheid as a reprise of their own civil righ...
The Messiah waits
Here is a lovely parable—all the more lovely considering that it comes from the chief rabbi of Great Britain’s Orthodox Je...