It’s almost a sure thing, a guaranteed bestseller: Why do bad things happen to good people? Every tragedy or calamity, every natural, unnatural or supernatural disaster, every act of terror or act of God–without fail the Amazon rankings reflect the spike in interest in why there is suffering,...

People don’t study the Bible anymore. At least that’s the prevailing opinion of a lot of people I know. By “people” I mean my colleagues in Christian publishing and my friends in Christian education. By “people” they mean not the Old and New Testament scholars, the...

I used to lead a small group in a megachurch. I would go to these training sessions to brainstorm solutions to common problems. The one that we small group leaders always came back to–the one that got all the laughs–was the “extra grace required” guy (or “EGR,” for...

To the tune of the prayer of St. Francis of Asissi; we sing it silently as we live among one another. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. One that diminishes hatred and crescendos love. One that fills the backbeat of every injury with pardon. One that harmonizes every doubt with a root note of...

East Lake Commons I don’t golf much. I’m pretty bad at it, to be honest. I’m also something of a populist; I don’t like pomposity and I don’t like to be told what’s what by the upper crust. But I like food—a lot. And so when I received an invitation to a members-only golf club for a free...

You know what I miss? The passing of the peace. When I was a kid, I passed the peace every week. It was part of the liturgy in the Sunday mass. We would hit that part of the service, and I would kiss my mom (on the mouth! Eeewww!), hug my less demonstrative dad, try to crush the bones in the right hands...

I learned something the other day. From a commercial. For blue jeans. “There are frontiers everywhere.” Good line. I keep chewing on it. Thanks, Levi’s. It got me thinking. Levi’s is, unarguably, the grandaddy of all jeans. Without Levi’s, there would be no blue jeans. We...

It happens to all of us, I suppose. It’s a tragedy when it doesn’t. We age and age and age to the point where we are known as old. “Old” is not necessarily bad, O ye of few years; but “old” is limiting—and not merely in the physical sense. The older we get the less mobile we are, sure,...

People who know such things—social psychologists, culture watchers and historians—have referred to Millennials (the generation born after 1981) as potentially the greatest generation since, well, “the Greatest Generation,”comparing favorably to the crop of people that pulled the United States...

I used to accompany church youth groups on spring break trips to Florida—beaches and Bible studies, theme parks and service projects, hormones and holiness, that sort of thing. Our evening programs were largely dependent on the talents the kids brought with them, and consequently the content of the...