Opportunities and Challenges for Pastoral Ministry in 2023
Seven pastoral leaders—pastors, reconcilers, preachers, and scholars—offer insights from their unique contexts on the greatest opportunities and challenges for ministry work now.
Lent Resource Guide
This list of Lenten art, music, devotions, liturgies, books, and sermons will help you plan worship for Lent and includes resources for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.
The Fruit of the Spirit, Mental Health Crises, and Our Practices of Christian 91ÁÔÆæ
In a world of anxiety, depression, and fatigue, how do we both explain and invite people into experiences of profound joy, peace, and gentleness? Where do our practices of worship—our preaching, singing, praying, and communing—contribute to our mental health crises? How might these very practices become means of grace that bring healing and hope? And how might this be true for people in very different generational contexts?
Two Pastors on God at Work in Ordinary People and Places
Moses Chung and Christopher Meehan cowrote the book "Joining Jesus: Ordinary People at the Edges of the Church." They hope these stories will give people and congregations hope, encouragement, and imagination to see what God is already doing in their neighborhoods.
Benjamin T. Conner on Friendship and Hospitality that Embraces Youth with Developmental Disabilities
Practical theologian Benjamin T. Conner encourages and challenges congregations and pastors to reorient ministry with youth to fully include and amplifiy the witness of adolescents with developmental disabilities.
Mary Aluel Garang: The Charles Wesley of South Sudan
Since the mid-1980s, Mary Aluel Garang's theologically rich hymns have helped Sudanese Christians maintain faith and hope in God despite decades of war, conflict, and hardship. Her songs are known and sung beyond her Dinka people, her Episcopal tradition, and her nation of South Sudan.
Karen Campbell on Dinka Gospel Songs
Meeting Dinka Christians and musicians decades ago in East Africa made a lasting impression on Karen Campbell, a pastor and musician. She reflects on what we can learn about God through the lens of other cultures.
Dinka Christian Infrastructure: Song and Prayer Ministries
During decades of Sudanese civil war, the Jol Wo Lieech song ministry and Thiec Nhialic prayer ministry gave refugees and refugee congregations a sense of family and purpose. Both still work to unite Christians, whether or not they belong to the Dinka tribe or still live in South Sudan.
Disability within Faith Communities
A showcase of books and articles related to worship and disabilites
Carol Arend on the Art of Accompaniment
Accompanying people on their faith journey is an art that can be learned, according to Pope Francis. When St. Thomas More Catholic Community committed itself to the art of accompaniment, it learned principles that nearly any worship community can apply, Catholic or not.
Christian Martyrdom and the Witness of Ordinary Christian Life
In this conversation, theology professors Matt Lundberg and Mary Vanden Berg talk about Matt's new book Christian Martyrdom and Christian Violence and what it means for Christians to be faithful in a world that both experiences and inflicts violence, and how the Spirit is working in and through the church to shape and equip us to follow the way of Jesus in the life of faith.
Navajo Burials and Christian Hope
The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated death-related issues in the Navajo Nation. Even so, affirming all that's good about "walking in beauty" gives Navajos on the Jesus Way a bridge to comfort people bound by fearful Navajo taboos about death.