Once upon a time, a group of friends got together in a living room to pray, to sing, and to have a meal together. Their community was contagious. Others began to join them until the living room was packed to discomfort each time they gathered. Eventually, the friends realized they needed to rent a more…

A couple of years ago, I was contracted to write a book which would be a part of a series targeted at skeptics. My subject matter was the church; the book’s title is The Church For Skeptics: A Conversation For Thinking People. The publishing biz is going through the same painful contractions the rest of…

Though I’m fighting a serious case of respiratory illness, I wanted to share one of the most profound images of our recent trip to Israel. Just a few hours after we landed in Israel, Bill and I had made our way to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. We separated, as men and…

“When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed…

Rex’s life was marked by one tragic diagnosis after another: blind, autistic, a spectrum of other neurological/developmental problems. Left to raise her severely-disabled son after her husband left the family when Rex was still a baby, Cathleen Lewis became a ferocious advocate for her son. Her intense and complete commitment to caring for him allowed…

Yesterday, we attended the quarterly “When We Pray” county-wide concert of prayer. Each time it’s held, the 4-hour Saturday morning even is housed in a different evangelical church building throughout Lake County, IL. There aren’t many places where believers from a w-i-d-e variety of churches can come to intercede for the time and place in which…