Late at night on Jan. 26, I was reading The Widows of Eastwick. The next day I learned that the author of that novel, John Updike, had died. His death felt like losing a college friend with whom one made an annual contact, a good neighbor who came to see us once a year …
Over the next six months, Mennonite Church USA congregations will make decisions about their participation in The Corinthian Plan, the new employee benefit plan for pastors and church workers. Our goal is to have 300 congregations signed up by the time we gather for the Mennonite Church USA Convention 2009 in Columbus, Ohio, in July. The enrollment period ends Oct. 1 …
Many of us accept that we cannot ignore sexual abuse; victims and offenders worship in our congregations. We must not continue to silence victims of sexual abuse as we have for years, nor can we demonize and alienate individuals who have committed sexual offenses. Yet God calls us to a third way …
It is better to give than to receive. For the person brought up in the arms of the church, this could be one of those “lessons I learned in kindergarten,” Sunday school kindergarten at least …
In order to address “the afterlife,” one must first speak of the meaning of life in the present. The afterlife does not stand alone as if disconnected from prior earthly life. The after is connected to the before, to the everyday life of the Christian in the present. The attitude toward death in our society is relevant as well …
Living in the present is at once the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll do. And the key is found in those two short words (six letters) “at once” …
The story of Jacob wrestling at Peniel has always puzzled me. In my first Bible, the New International Version I read as a third-grader, the subject heading was “Jacob Wrestles with an Angel.” If this stranger is indeed an angel of the Lord, it is not one of the sort pictured on greeting cards or spoken of in sentimental tales of angels in disguise helping people unaware …
