Reviewed by John Potter Sometimes songs that weren’t written to be sung in church are the ones that connect us to God most deeply. Here are six albums released in the last decade that you won’t find in the “Christian […]
Guest Author
North Park Helped Shape Irving’s ‘Prophetic Voice’
CHICAGO (August 21, 2015) — It was three days before Sharon Irving was to audition for the TV series America’s Got Talent. Mere hours before her rendition of “Take Me to Church” by Hozier would bring the crowd and judges […]
The Poetry of Grief
By Elise Steel My faith journey started when I was seventeen years old. I thought God had complete control of the world—so much control that once someone became a Christian, bad things no longer happened to him or her. Life […]
Voices: A “Stronger, Smaller, and Stranger” Church Is in Your Future
By T. David Beck SACRAMENTO, CA (August 10, 2015) — The number of self-professing Christians in America is continuing to decline. The number of “nones” (people who are affiliated with no particular religion) is on the rise. Should Christians be alarmed?
Why the Church Needs Twitter
By Hauna Ondrey In 1929 Olga Lindborg, assistant Sunday-school secretary for the Covenant, suggested that the new media of film “carries the future in its bosom” and so should be “sanctified” for use in the church, rather than condemned in […]
Broken
By Dana Bowman Depending on how you look at it, my son Henry is either very brave or very reckless. It is five o’clock in the afternoon. I have no idea what to prepare for dinner, and we’re all dying […]
Voices: We Are family! Giving Students Bigger Vision of Their Faith, Church
By Ben Kerns SAN RAFAEL, CA (July 20, 2015) — Ben Kerns is pastor of youth and children at Marin Covenant Church in San Rafael, California. This slightly edited article first appeared on his blog, Average Youth Ministry. Last week I […]
What’s Wrong with Today’s Youth Ministry?
By Josh Hiben Growing up in a non-practicing Christian family, I never attended church until my friend Steve invited me to youth group when I was in middle school. We played balloon basketball my first night, and gradually Bloomington (Minnesota) […]
Subversive Sermons: Women Hymn Writers as Preachers
By David Bjorlin CHICAGO, IL David Bjorlin is a pastor of worship at Resurrection Covenant Church in Chicago and adjunct lecturer in worship at North Park Theological Seminary. This article was originally published on the Commission on Biblical Gender Equality […]
Crashing the Party
By T. David Beck Imagine your Sunday worship service as a dinner party. It’s an important social event where there’s music, people mix together, an important speech is delivered, and a meal is served. If your church regulars are the […]
History of a People
Congo: The Epic History of a People David Van Reybrouck Translated by Sam Garrett Ecco, 2014 639 pages If you liked King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild’s tale of the carving up of Congo by King Leopold of Belgium, you will […]
A Call to Action
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power Jimmy Carter Simon & Schuster, 2014 224 pages Jimmy Carter left the presidency before I was born, so my images of him tend to emerge from history books: pictures of long […]