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Apr 9, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Josh Scott |Heidi Haverkamp |Stacey E. Simpson
Great leaders of congregational song attend to the new community formed every time a church gathers. Thomas’s experience with the risen Christ is a testament to the possibilities Easter creates. The information age feels like an all-you-can-eat buffet. I’m stuffed. If Mark’s gospel were a movie, this scene would make the perfect trailer. Without entirely giving away the ending, it summarizes all the major themes of Mark’s Gospel....
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Apr 8, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Josh Scott |Heidi Haverkamp |Stacey E. Simpson
Should United Methodist institutions divest of fossil fuel company stocks as a matter of Christian principle? Or is the faithful path to remain engaged and lean on companies to do more about global warming? The church’s divestment vs. engagement debate is not new but will be revived at the general conference beginning April 23 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Some delegates know where they stand, including Karen McElfish, a retired pediatrician from the Virginia Conference. She’s strong for divestment.
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Apr 8, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
The special glasses have been delivered. The portable toilets have been ordered. Now, for expectant sky watchers and for property owners—including a number of churches—in the path of the total solar eclipse Monday, it’s just a matter of waiting and hoping for good weather until the eclipse begins.
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Apr 8, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Josh Scott |Heidi Haverkamp |Stacey E. Simpson
Last year our family spent fall break on Tybee Island in Georgia. It was absolutely gorgeous there, and we had the best week playing in the surf and sand. One evening we took a short ride over to Savannah to have dinner and take a walking ghost tour of the old city. I have always been a little fascinated with the paranormal. Now, I am quite a skeptic; I don’t really buy it, though I am open to my mind being changed. Still, from campfire stories to movies, spooky things always draw me in.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Luci Shaw |Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum
Reversing Entropy does so by constant motion and by linkages within that motion. Even in the orderly heavens, the poet catches a wandering star through the skylight in her room. The birds fly. The clouds move. Rain falls. There is movement from one element into another—synesthesia, it is called in “Lilies of the Valley,” where the flowers’ fragrance becomes music. Luci Shaw’s new collection is a magical world of daily bread where ordinary objects trespass their boundaries.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Josh Scott |Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum
To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up. For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century. I’ll never forget the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. I’m sure none of us will. Covid touched just about every area of our lives and left an indelible mark on us.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum |Debie Thomas
I heard a story recently that broke my heart. A pastor was speaking about his practice of meeting with families when their loved ones die. He makes a point, he said, of asking them about legacy. “What will you remember most vividly about your loved one? What have they left behind that you might carry forward?”At least 80 percent of the time, he said, the families tell him that their loved ones worked hard.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum |Benjamin Dueholm
I had been advised against opening the door to the church when I was there alone, but I could see through the peephole that it was just a young woman. When I cracked the door a few inches to ask how I could help her, she pushed past me into the entry of the small narthex. She asked for someone who wasn’t there, and I warily introduced myself as the intern. She needed some money, which neither I nor the church had on hand.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum
A leather-bound Bible hangs on the gallery wall, a strap running beneath its spine. Its cover is opened just enough so that torrents of thinly cut strips of scripture cascade from its gilt-edge pages. Has the artist vandalized the word? Or is she showing the word erupting from its rectilinear confines to act upon us? Linda Ekstrom has been altering and reconfiguring Bibles since the 1990s.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum |Scott Hagley
(Illustration by Owen Gent) Is there a pastoral version of the Great Resignation unfolding? If so, most people seem certain that it has to do with the unique challenges pastors face. Americans don’t attend church in the numbers or with the enthusiasm they once did. Our polarized political culture constrains pastoral freedom in the pulpit. Congregations struggle to offer adequate compensation to support national searches, long hours, and even simply making ends meet.
