William H. Willimon
The limits of explanation
Last year Professor Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina cranked out yet another book, God’s Problem. Dr. Ehrman breathlessly announces that he has discovered that God has a big problem – suffering.
Ehrman dismisses various futile attempts on the part of God to explain
why there is suffering, pain, and disaster in the world – the Book of
Job, Ecclesiastes, and Jesus.
Fictional pastors
Douglas Alan Walrath's astute survey of American novels about clergy is essential reading for budding pastors—as well as
for anybody who wants to understand why we American
clergy are the way we are.
Harvard's preacher: Peter J. Gomes, 1942–2011
I feel sorry for those who never got to hear Peter Gomes work a congregation while a biblical text worked him. He was a teacher, raconteur and best-selling author. But his primary vocation was as a preacher.
Voice lessons: Learning to preach
King George was terrified to be in front of a microphone. That's nothing compared to going
head to head with the average North American congregation with nothing but three points and a poem.
Family
It
didn't take our new governor long to stumble with his comment that if
you haven't accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, "You're not my brother and
you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." It took the
governor a long time to apologize, saying he didn't mean to offend. I've
heard from lots of United Methodists who are not so much offended by
the governor's remarks as concerned that he - perhaps unintentionally -
misrepresented the Christian faith.
A review of The Shape of Participation
If you share my concern about the theological thinness of much of the
current craze of construing Christianity as a practice, get Roger
Owens's book. Even more, if you care about the theological identity of
the church, you will find The Shape of Participation to be this decade's finest work of ecclesiology.
A review of More Perfect Unions
Eighty years ago marital counseling was a brand new profession. Today millions of married couples and 40 percent of all engaged couples
receive counseling.
Leading from the belly: Pastoral plenty
“Seventy-eight percent of all clergy are either overweight (48 percent) or obese (30 percent).” —Pulpit & Pew Research Pr...
Now can we sing?
We Christians believe that we have a moral obligation to point to the pain that the rest of the world can’t see. Others may stroll past the suffering, but we stop and stare, take up an offering, make an appeal and collect blankets, sighing as we do our bit to alleviate some of the misery. That life may not actually be rotten in our part of the world today only increases our guilt for our occasional lapses into joy. How dare we sing when others are sufffering?
Too much practice: Second thoughts on a theological movement
Few things are more humbling for a professor than to hear your classroom assertions parroted back to you....
Dear John: Your Gospel does not meet our current needs
To: John
From: Harold Sniveling, Acquisitions Editor
Re: Your submission
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
She was the best confessedly Christian writer of the 20th century, maybe one of the very best of any time or place. With dark wit, always tinged with a threat of horror, she packed into her stories the guilt, blood, violence, blinding light and costly redemption that is our encounter with the living Christ, though she seldom made explicit reference to Christ. Her stories are parables of a world with everything out of balance, not just because most of them occur in the unbalanced American South, but because she deeply believed that we have been whopped upside the head by a God who is determined to have us—even if God has to venture into inhospitable rural Georgia to do it.
Accidental lessons: My encounter with a chainsaw
I believe that prayer can heal, and I’ve witnessed miraculous healings in my own pastorates. So why was I, cast into extremis by a chainsaw, reluctant to pray?
Trustworthy
Barbara Blodgett, director of supervised ministries at Yale Divinity School, has written what may be the best book yet on the cruc...
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer
Bart Ehrman has written another book that is probably destined to be a best seller....
Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting
If there is one idea that unites Jim Wallis and Pat Robertson, it is the idea that voting is a good idea....
Islam: Past, Present and Future
Shortly after the attacks of September 11, President Bush declared that the perpetrators had “violated the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith...
First call: From seminary to parish
I was a freshly minted product of seminary, plopped down by the bishop into a forlorn little church in rural Georgia. During my first sermons, my congregation stared at me impassively.
...
Be Near Me
This is a book I should not have liked. It’s a story of a lonely Catholic priest trapped in a bleak little parish in a nowhere Scottish town....