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A day did exist when a church could grow and thrive by opening its doors on Sunday and welcoming whoever arrived. Knowing how to welcome regulars and visitors was as much evangelism as a congregation needed to do. That day ended long ago. Nowadays, most churches don’t have enough visitors to offset the inevitable attrition that happens when people die, move out of town, or lose interest. And “regular attendance” now means one or two Sundays a month, not three or four.

In my pocket, all my waking day, I carry a device that enables me to communicate instantly with practically anyone around the globe. I’m a cog in a vast international system of manufacturing, trade, and consumption. Sure, we’re all connected in these ways. But in our face-to-face encounters with other people, or when we walk in wilderness and commune personally with other living beings, we sense this connection in a much deeper way.

Civilization defines justice as retribution – payback; an eye for an eye. But the deeper meaning of justice is distributive: the rain falls on the good, the bad, and the ugly without partiality. Civilization does not use that definition except in cases where there is clearly injustice if partiality enters the picture.

Disillusioned with organized religion, some people escape into New Age movements, and others retreat from spirituality altogether. A more satisfying and transformative option is to embark on a quest to discover God on your own. Using time-tested tools of spiritual investigation, you can examine your present beliefs, explore the nature of God and your sense of self and ultimately expand your identity.

I think we got off on the wrong foot, believing that death came into the world because of sin. If there is something divinely providential about our lives, there must be something divinely providential about our deaths. In the language of the previous post, “The Universe in Your Soul,” the cosmos that begat life must have also begat death.

How can we achieve the sense of cosmic multidimensionality expressed in the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi in 1945? For each of us in our 21st century world this is our predicament. What is expressed …

Rachel Held Evans has been called “the most polarizing woman in Evangelicalism.” She is a New York Times bestselling author of three books and a popular blog in which she wrestles honestly with the cruelties and contradictions in her Christian tradition from the standpoint of a loving insider on a quest to understand God and goodness more deeply. In this interview by Valerie Tarico, Held Evans discusses both the book and her broader faith journey.

We’re overusing the earth’s finite resources, and yet excessive consumption is failing to improve our lives. In Enough Is Enough, Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill lay out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth—an economy where the goal is not more but enough.

Our gods are more a part of us than we realize. We pattern our thoughts and actions after them. Only by understanding how we have defined them can we begin to understand the underlying forces that make …

People accuse each other of cherry picking sacred texts, as if the term was an insult. But for those seeking to honor the quest of the Bible writers or to raise healthy children within a Christian tradition, that is precisely the right approach.

No longer can congregations focus all of their energies on Sunday morning worship. They can’t just open the door on Sunday and expect people to walk through. The flow of visitors isn’t enough to compensate for attrition, and people’s needs are too varied.

Yes, both transparency and engagement add to the board’s work. But resolving the issues won’t mean a thing unless these two steps are taken. Keeping constituents in trusting mode and engaged is the board’s primary work.

Although our denials, evasions and minimizations sometimes delude us, we are basically rational, mostly moral and often reasonable; and we remain lovable, capable and forgivable. We seek to improve, and strive for what is right. But it bodes us well to acknowledge that our limited minds are too partial to supply objective views about ourselves, others or situations. Our self-justifications, personalized preferences and subjective notions can always benefit from a candid reality check.

“Faith Fight”—that’s what the local news is calling it. Eight churches in Fountain Hills, Arizona, led by the Rev. Bill Good, pastor of Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), have posted banners announcing a sermon series called “‘Progressive’ …

Tom makes the audacious claim here that faith communities are uniquely situated to lead the evolution of human consciousness to help create a more just, caring and sustainable world. Crazy Wisdom is dedicated to answering how we just might go about doing that.

Humanity is not inherently evil, or sinful, or broken. Creation has been groaning for billions of years so that we might evolve. Creation continues to groan as we continue to evolve into all that we can be.

Albert Einstein’s maxim, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind,” takes on new meaning. Without the insights and empathetic values that come to us through spirituality, science is reduced to a cold and dehumanizing worldview.

It is my hope that all who read these pages will be left with a deeper appreciation of the emerging intersection of modern science and spirituality.

Each of us is a unique individual. How we think, how we perceive certain events, what images we use to objectify our mental perceptions, etc., are unique to the individual. We don’t fit one common mold. Why should we think that we could expect uniformity in the most unique, complex area of personal consciousness: religious belief? It is my thinking that we should accept the historical Creeds of the Church as documents that served a purpose in their time of history, but that the historic Creeds of the past should not limit the working of God’s spirit in our own time.