Ten or fifteen years ago, “courtship” became a buzzword in Evangelical culture. Books like Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye* and Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity popularized the notion of replacing dating with antediluvian courtship rituals. It started a lot of conversations and sold...

God is not fair. He gleefully flaunts it too. He shoves it in our faces. Jesus’ version of reality is devoid of common sense. The Kingdom of God might as well be called, “Crazy Upside-down Jesus World.” Here’s an example: Say I need some landscaping done at my house. So I go to the...

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...

Plenty of folks, including Burnside on occasion, rail against the machinery of Christian music. There’s good reason to do so, since the Christian music industry at large has hardly been a catalyst for innovation and creativity. But many of Burnside’s writers have also been deeply impacted...

This corner is an ugly one. On the more rainy days, the place is made up of nothing but odd light and cold splashes from impatient tires. Leary and 26th feels colder than other intersections around the city. The sidewalk-side of Leary Ave in Seattle is colder than any other single place. My favorite...

Editor’s Note: Burnside contributor Chad Gibbs recently traveled to the twelve schools of the SEC to explore the intersection of faith and fandom. Chad recounts his journey in “God and Football” (Zondervan). The book is funny and insightful no matter what conference you belong to. It...

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...

Several years ago a pastor asked me to coach him on some leadership issues. He was a brand new pastor and was having a hard time acclimating to the demands of the job. I remembered what a mess of a leader I was my rookie year, so I agreed to meet with him regularly. The meetings went okay for a while,...

A few months after this site started up, which seems like 10 years ago, I received an emailed article about golf from some Alabamian named Chad Gibbs. “No one cares about golf,” I muttered.  But I read it anyway, and it was surprisingly funny, so we ran it. Then Chad sent another article,...

I don’t remember how I got to Rachel Held Evans’ blog, but once I got there, I was hooked.  I connected immediately to Rachel’s provocative, yet disarming manner of taking on certain traditional statements, stances, or interpretations of evangelicalism.  Asking questions of her readers...