Our townhome community is situated next to a set of railroad tracks and a graveyard, which sounds worse than it is. I rarely notice the low rumble of freight rolling past us anymore. And our neighbors at Evergreen Cemetery, have become some of my favorite people in town to visit. Their stories are captured in…

What do those in the second half of their lives tell the big “C” Church about the kind of faith that endures? I’d like to suggest that those at midlife and beyond have something important to teach all of us about “marathon faith”: And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,…

The conversation turned to regret, as it sometimes does when two middle-aged women are sharing stories of their lives over lunch. A good friend introduced her good friend Libby Buchanan to me, telling me that Libby had a story to share, and was in the process of writing a book about it. Libby does indeed…

I worked as a paid caregiver for two years. I ran errands, shopped, prepared meals, organized a few closets and pantries, did some housecleaning and provided companionship for some elderly clients trying to stave off checking themselves in to a care facility. All showed me something of the fragility of life, especially as our aging…

Even when the truth comes out about a spiritual leader’s secret life, the kinds of lawyered-up semi-confessions that they and their team use to respond to their victims, congregants and the general public seem to be missing a key element: true regret. Leaders likeDoug Phillips or Bill Gothard engineer almost-apologies. As I’ve followed these cases over the last…

Professor Diane Leclerc of Northwest Nazarene University has a piece up on the Christianity Today website called “The Good News About Bad Churches”. In it, she asks, “How, then, do we explain the seeming contradiction between what we believe about the church and what we experience in the church? Is it wishful thinking to proclaim the church holy? Are pain…