Historically, Evangelicals have been those who’ve planted their flag well within carefully-defined spiritual boundaries. People are either “in” or “out”, based on their stated relationship with Jesus. On the inside of that boundary line, there are dozens of other fissure lines based on denomination, worship style, and doctrinal difference. Boundary-crossing words like “interfaith” and “ecumenical”…

When writer-friend Catherine McNeil told me she was writing about the spiritual formation embedded in the baby-toddler-preschooler years, I was anxious to read what she had to say. I well remember discovering that the discipleship model I followed before I had children (hours of uninterrupted Bible study, reading, prayer, and service to others) needed an overhaul…

What do the person running the church nursery, the senior running the register at the local St. Vincent de Paul thrift store, and the person unloading canned goods at a food pantry all have in common? They are all volunteers, drawn into service by a desire to make a difference in someone else’s life. The…

My husband and I once had a pastor whose wife had never signed on with her husband’s calling. She married a businessman, not a downwardly-mobile spiritual entrepreneur who had meetings 4 nights a week and dealt with congregational crisis what seemed like 8 nights a week while she was left to function as a single…

For decades, it seemed that there were only two basic options in the Church when it came to discussions of Israel. The first, dispensationalism, objectifies the idea of Israel both now and in the future, and requires elaborate charts and the entire fictional Left Behind canon to unpack. The second, supercessionism, says that the Church…