I was recently invited to speak to a Sunday School class at Faith Presbyterian Church about theological support for welcoming immigrants. It is adapted from my earlier response to the introduction of Alabama HB 56. Below is the text of my comments to the Sunday School class. Theological Support for Adopting a Welcoming Stance Toward […]
I recently read Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman, Gabe Lyons and Lloyd James. I was propelled to read it as I heard about a statistic at a workshop lead by Ron Martoia that 92% of 16-29 year old unchurched people see the church […]
Last month, I listened to Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators. I became interested in the book by hearing about the “Shirky Principle,” particularly as it relates to the church on Tony Jones’ blog. The Shirky Principle basically states that institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are […]
I recently had a chance to be a part of putting together a theological and biblical critique of HB 56, which is a tough anti-immigration bill already passed into law by the Alabama legislature and signed by the governor. The opening pages of the bill list the intentions of the bill followed by a bunch […]
At the North Alabama Annual Conference of the UMC, I recently heard Brian McLaren make the argument that the church is in a similar predicament to the United States Postal Service. With the decline of letters and rise of email and digital media plus huge overhead, the postal service has run large deficits and has, […]