Survey the landscape of American Christianity on any given Sunday and you’ll find plenty of evidence that God is on the throne, we’re walking in victory, and Satan’s utterly crushed.  There are lots of praise choruses about our victory and God’s goodness, along with clapping...

Some time ago I found myself in Denver for a conference. Knowing absolutely nobody, I set myself down in an open chair at a session, next to this guy who was decked out to the nines in punk uniform. Leather, studs, chains, tattoos, piercings, hair dye, mohawk—he jangled whenever he shifted in his seat....

You sit across the coffee shop with a white turban, each crease folded with care, undulating like lines in the Mombasa sand at low tide. I watch you sipping espresso and fiddling with your phone, and I realize there are no enemies. Only others who are really us, but for the gap of knowing. If only we...

Watching the Superbowl in a crowd of fifty people in a private house is a strange experience, as the only thing that can cut through the din of joviality and smack talk is a shrill, “Shhh, the commercials are on.”  I usually pay attention to neither the game nor the commercials, but I sat, pen poised...

Every January my clinic schedule fills up with patients who, in keeping with their New Year’s resolutions, want to lose weight, drink less alcohol, and stop smoking. In my first few years of practice, I felt obligated to give each of these patients a 20 minute lecture on their vice of choice, replete...

My church is offering what might be an unusual parenting class. There is a psychology professor in town who goes to our church, and we’ve got her presenting a Sunday School class that emphasizes adolescent brain development. I suspect that this class is unusual for two reasons. First, most parents...

Here’s why there was an horrific earthquake in Haiti: It sits on an unstable fault line between two tectonic plates, just like the one a few miles away from where I sit in Southern California. The awful, simple truth is that the beautiful island of Hispaniola rests on a piece of the planet that’s...

Susan Isaacs and Donald Miller have been doing a lot of church hopping lately.  Through the fall, they were popping in and out of churches across Donald Miller, Susan Isaacs, Stephanie Nikolopoulos, and Sally Lloyd-Jones America to share from their latest books.  When they stopped in New York, they...

“Where is Christ for you right now?”  This question was posed at the 11pm Christmas Eve service at my parents’ church, after which we were encouraged to take a few moments of silence to reflect. Truth be told, Christ wasn’t forefront for me this season.  In fact, the only time I really thought...

I’ve stated a number of times the ’00s were the Golden Age of television, when HBO and a number of network shows officially blew the film industry out of the water. When we look back on the great stories of this decade, we’ll remember books like Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead”,...