This is an excerpt from my book, THE FEAST (chapter three, WRESTLING WITH THE REAL JESUS):
I wrestle with whether I’m an admirer of Jesus in that dream crowd or whether I’m truly following his radical teachings. I feel like Robert Jordan, the brother of the influential writer and activist Clarence Jordan. Clarence approached his powerful [...]

During a Columbia class lecture a few weeks back, I jotted down the following as the big challenges local churches face in the coming ten years: consumerism, sexuality, sacred/secular, tribalism, technology, beliefs (epistemology), nationalism (not the same as patriotism), and busyness. Of course, there are other ways to say what I’m saying but sometimes I [...]

I like these words from Lauren Winner.
Evangelical friends of mine are always trying to trim the corners and smooth the rough edges of what they call My Witness in order to shove it into a tidy, born-again conversion narrative. They want an exact date, even an hour, and I never know what to tell them. [...]

My close friend, Jonathan Storment, wrote this on his blog recently. I’ve heard about what Mark Moore is doing through mutual friends and I am excited to partner with him and this BIG DREAM.
For the longest time I’ve heard about a guy named Mark Moore. We had both graduated from the same school in Arkansas [...]

Here’s another excerpt from The Feast.
“A writer, whose name I’ve since forgotten, once wrote that the two great religions in America are optimism and denial.”
—Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk
The soul of American Christianity is malnourished. We are in constant need of having our imaginations raised from slumber. Feasting together on the words and stories [...]

Before I get into Wuthnow’s conclusions in After the Baby Boomers, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the challenges of forming young adults into diverse Christian community. That last part is crucial.
1. As I noted earlier, young adults (college, young professional, and young married) are among the most ignored demographic groups in the [...]

I’m doing some reading/research on young adults in the U.S. and the relationship of Christianity. Many point to Robert Wuthnow’s book, After the Baby Boomers, as the definitive work on the subject.
Having just moved from a job in which I worked closely with college students, doing a doctorate degree on the relationship of religion and [...]