L. Gregory Jones
Psalms of rage: Ellen Davis's provocative interpretations
"She must be wrong about saying you can get angry at God. That goes against everything I’ve been taught about God....
Grace-full gestures: Opportunities for reconciliation
In his wonderful memoir Open Secrets, Richard Lischer describes a personal conflict that developed between Lischer and Leonard, a lay leader in the congregation....
Light in darkness
On September 11, I was scheduled to lecture on Simone Weil’s classic essay, “The Love of God and Affliction.” I never made it to class—it was canceled due to the devastating, horrifying news of the...
Pivotal leadership: Seminary strategies
Faithful, effective Christian congregations make a difference....
Maturing downward
What are your ambitions?” an administrative colleague asked me recently. I am not often speechless, but this time I didn’t know what to say....
Living into our histories
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” So Anne Tyler begins her latest novel, Back When We Were Grownups....
Truth or consequences
When David Horowitz offered 50 college newspapers a paid advertisement, he was setting a perfect trap....
Taking the long view
How do you learn to think about the long-range implications of issues in a culture that is fixated on the short term?...
Some kind of tomorrow
How can hope be sustained when traumatic memories of conflict or oppression haunt a person or group? This question has become central in a course I am teaching with an African-American colleague....
Beside the weary road
Even for those faithful souls for whom Christmas begins on December 25 and continues for 12 days thereafter, the season is over....
Christmas presence
There will be no Christmas celebration in Bethlehem’s Manger Square this year....
Why bother to think?
One of the central characters in Berke Breathed’s wonderful comic strip Bloom County was a penguin named Opus....
Chain of hope
During the years of apartheid in South Africa, most of the Methodist Church’s involvement in education was halted by the government....
Geographies of memory
It just didn’t seem right, reflecting on my father’s life and death in the midst of a city where neither of us had spent much time....
Swimming in the deep end
The principal of the Catholic high school was taken aback by the phone call. It came from an inmate in a nearby prison....
Letter bombs
Several years ago Carly Simon recorded a CD titled “Letters Never Sent.” The songs reflect a collection of letters she wrote over the years but never sent to the intended recipients....
Evil and Good Friday
A pastor from South Africa was finishing his first year as a full-time pastor in the U.S. He had served churches in the two countries, so I asked him to compare the role of the church in the U.S....
A bottomless pit
"The politics of death is a bottomless pit that sucks everybody in.” This judgment, offered by a California attorney who has tried more than 100 capital cases, aptly summarizes the complicated argu...
Formed for ministry: A program in spiritual formation: Learning and praying
"I want my seminary experience to form me as a person of prayer.” We had never heard a student state this desire so eloquently and succinctly....