Preaching and the Lilly Endowment

by | Dec 9, 2008 | Opinion

I am recruiting 15-18 young people, students in high school, college, university or seminary who will serve on a Young Preachers Leadership Team. We will gather for a retreat in January, convene for a week-long Preaching Camp in June, and host the first Festival of...

The Significance of Preaching

by | Dec 2, 2008 | Opinion

There has been significant erosion in the conviction that preaching is a vocation of significance, that it is an avenue of influence in the world. So, intelligent, talented and passionate young people are turning away from preaching toward careers as worship artists,...

So You Want to Be a Preacher

by | Nov 25, 2008 | Opinion

I never took a class in preaching; I don’t remember anyone talking to me about preaching; I am sure I did not read anything about preaching. Given this, it is a wonder that anybody had the grit to sit through one of my so-called sermons. If you are like me that...

China and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

by | Nov 20, 2008 | Opinion

China has a long way to go ”economically, politically and morally ”before it is able to celebrate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But the matter once again brings attention to China as a major violator of basic human rights. Jane Deren,...

Don’t Poison the Well of Public Discourse

by | Oct 14, 2008 | Opinion

It was the religious people who first injected the language of battlefield into the civic debate. They did so, first, in religious struggles, as Baptists in the South can attest. The struggle to dominate was not simply among brothers who disagreed on this or that; it...