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"Progressive Christians do a good job with issues like LGBT rights," says Dennis Sanders of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Minneapolis. "But we're less good at helping people become disciples of Jesus."

Vox Veniae began as a church plant growing out of the Austin Chinese Church's ministry to Asian students. But its members felt isolated.

Sister Carol Bernice told me once that when she milks the cows she whispers "Yah-weh" as she alternates hands milking the teats.

Gangs excel at finding the lost, adopting them and sending them out. Therefore, gang youth can be recruited for apostolic ministry.

I once saw children's ministry as a steppingstone to something else. This attitude put me in league with the hindering kind of disciples.

"Speak the truth in love," and "see that none of you repays evil for evil," exhorts St. Paul. Which is easier said than done.

"I don't think we have laid the ground for a national conversation on poverty. People just don't know the facts."

Scholars traveling to Chicago for the joint AAR–SBL meeting will have to make hard decisions—beginning with where to lay their heads.

I once nailed the doors of my church shut. I needed to keep a burglar out who'd been looking for something to huff. Still, it seemed so antigospel.

Being a pastor is bad for your health. The Clergy Health Initiative aims to study this problem and begin to correct it.

Kenyan Muslims are a marginalized minority. Many are concentrated in Coast Province, where unfair land distribution is a festering wound.

What makes kindness a distinctive mark of the new creation?

What does "middle class" mean if it somehow applies to most of the country? And if we are all middle class now, what are the implications?

A man buys a lottery ticket at a small store in Cambodia. Ten years ago, he could have bought a human being there.

"In 2010 we decided to do a quarterly print magazine," says Englewood Review of Books editor C. Christopher Smith. "We felt like we were moving against the cultural tide."

When I left North Carolina at age 22, I never planned to be back in a Baptist church. Years later, here I am.

Reading fiction has done more to baptize my imagination, inform my faith and strengthen my courage than any prayer technique has.

Finally, Mom put the phone down. She took a large basin and placed our nicest guest towels in it. "Carol!" she yelled. "Let's go!"

Wild rice is like maple syrup or morel mushrooms: producers need customers who know the real thing and are willing to pay more for it.

Staring down the barrel of another Chicago winter at age 40, I was a little freaked. Then I started to serve soup.