Isaac S. Villegas

1 month ago | christiancentury.org | Heather McTeer Toney |Mac Loftin |Brandon Ambrosino |Isaac S. Villegas

“How in the world are Black folks supposed to talk about climate change when we have other pressing issues to deal with? How and better yet, why?” Heather McTeer Toney’s opening questions cut to the chase: How is climate change relevant to Black Americans who already face daily challenges to survival? In a nation where every Black family knows the stakes of getting home before the streetlights come on, this is a legitimate question.

2 months ago | christiancentury.org | Mac Loftin |Brian Bantum |Brandon Ambrosino |Isaac S. Villegas

My church’s order of worship includes a time to ask for prayer. During a service several months ago, as people passed the microphone from row to row for congregants to make their requests, I decided to raise my hand for a turn to share. I’d been suffering from a health condition that baffled doctors. I spoke up to ask my community to pray for me. There, as part of our worship, my community held my concerns in their prayers, entrusting my well-being into God’s care. We need each other.

Nov 21, 2024 | christiancentury.org | Victoria Barnett |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Isaac S. Villegas

Buried in the foreword to Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” the not-quite-disavowed blueprint for the incoming Trump administration, is a strange reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Open-borders activism,” the document declares, is “a classic example of what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace.’” Bonhoeffer is then invoked to denounce other excesses of the left, such as environmental extremism and insufficient hostility to China.

Oct 24, 2024 | anabaptistworld.org | Isaac S. Villegas

Gratitude is the life-giving pulse of our faith. The oldest name given to our practice of gathering and eating at the Lord’s table — the Eucharist — is taken from a Greek word, eucharisteo, which means “I give thanks.”The Apostle Paul uses this word in 1 Corinthians 11, the passage we use as our Words of Institution when we celebrate Communion: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said . .

Jun 28, 2024 | anabaptistworld.org | Isaac S. Villegas

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a parable that ­centers on an impatient son — the prodigal, as we’ve come to call him — who demands his inheritance while his father lives. The son will get the money when his father dies. But the son can’t wait. So he asks his father if they could just assume, for the sake of the payout, that he’s dead. The son values his father not as a person but as a bank account. Though the father has no obligation to do this, he agrees. This is the father’s first act of generosity.