(Guest blogger: Paul Vander Klay.  Paul is currently a pastor in Sacramento, California.  Before that, he was a missionary in the Dominican Republic with Christian Reformed World Missions.  He has his own blog LeadingChurch.com)
The Vancouver Sun recently published a piece lauding the therapeutic effects of religion in general.  Studies that support this and media reports [...]

Something I’ve discovered in my graduate work is that secular authors who are often quite critical of Christianity have beautiful ways of talking about the transcendent or love or relationships between humans that point an arrow straight toward God (or at least, I read it that way).
Here’s an example: today I was reading Undoing Gender [...]

I stumbled upon an interesting post on the Fallen and Flawed blog.   Twelve bloggers were asked to summarize the gospel in 10 words or less.  Here are the responses:

“Christ’s blood seals God’s promise to reconcile us with Him.” Eric Ruhnow (Who Tends the Fire)
“Jesus’ death and resurrection completes God’s plan to redeem mankind.” Don Dudley, [...]

(Guest Blogger: Dr. Robert Heerspink is director of Back to God Ministries International and a regular speaker on the weekly Back to God Hour radio program.  Before joining BTGMI, he served as the pastor for four churches in Michigan.)
This summer, I conducted a graveside service. Since I moved from congregational ministry, I don’t do many [...]

I’ve been looking for a meaningful but concise overview of a biblical perspective on health care reform, and this petition from Sojourners is the best I’ve found. I signed it and encourage other Christians to do so. And I encourage all readers to comment about whether this statement articulates your Christian convictions as they relate [...]

I won’t defend reality television as a quality genre of tv, but I will admit freely that I occasionally enjoy watching it. Especially as a roommate bonding activity. Though I don’t generally watch television for edification (everybody needs to space out once in a while), I occasionally am surprised to find some anyway.
I’ve seen a [...]

I recently came across this slate article about a “twitter revolution” in Moldova that turned out to be less liberating than we originally thought.  This article reminded me of how fond Americans are of the idea of revolution. Of course, our own country started with a revolution, so perhaps that explains our affinity.  It’s not [...]

I recently finished John D. Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct? which was a beautiful and challenging read.  I learned a lot about what it means to really follow Jesus from reading the book, but I’d like to draw attention to the way Caputo made me think about what it means to have faith.  Look at [...]

For Lent, I’m giving up the idea of giving up something for Lent. There are some good reasons to do it, but I can think of a few reasons not to.
1. It’s not the Self-Denial Olympics.
If the point of giving up something for Lent is nothing more than self-congratulation for feats of abstinence, I’m not [...]

Like many, I was raised to think that taking the Lord’s name in vain meant one thing: never uttering, “Oh my God” as an exclamation. To be honest, I really haven’t thought of the third commandment much in the past years until reading this recent Reflections of the Times post:

The idea is that using His [...]