A couple of mornings every week, I walk my middle-school daughter and my cabin-fever dog to the bus stop on the corner before I head off to work. We live in Denver, and during the winter months it’s as cold as you think it’s supposed to be in the “Mountain” time zone.…
The GROUP Magazine Q&A Kay Warren on Grief, and Facing Mental Illness By Rick Lawrence Editor’s Note: Kay and Rick Warren lead the most recognizable church in the world—Saddleback Community Church in Southern California. And that made the 2013 death, by suicide, of their youngest son Matthew all the more painful.…
Yesterday my 16-year-old daughter Lucy and three of her friends completed a six-minute documentary exploring the worldwide human trafficking problem, then submitted it for a school assignment. They designed a full-color tri-fold brochure as a companion piece, and created a stress ball with the words “Enough” printed on it as a “sellable item.”…
Professional sports is brimming with mid-numbing clichés, but every once-in-a-turquoise-moon an athlete says something that makes you think. On my drive home the other day I took a break from the depress-athon of world news to give my soul a little breathing room on sports-talk radio.…
One surprising privilege we enjoy as baptized followers of Jesus is our unique ability to commit heresy. I mean, only a believer can say or do something heretical, by definition. You have to believe in something before you turn it into a twisted belief.…
Editor’s Note: The Shack is the bestselling work of Christian fiction in history—it was written by a first-time author named William Paul Young, who made 15 copies of the manuscript to give to family and friends, and never expected it to be published.…
Editor’s Note: If you’re headed to a Christian conference in North America, it’s a solid bet that you’re about to see The Skit Guys perform. They’re everywhere, because their 20-year comedy partnership has made them the most in-demand performers in the Christian subculture.…
Over the whole arc of our life, scientists tell us there are two times when we experience rapid, explosive brain growth—one happens when we’re toddlers and the other happens during junior high. Toddlers and teenagers share this characteristic—both are missing the “mental traffic cop” that helps most adults sort and compare information before reacting to something.…
I have secrets. You do, too… And Robin Williams, the great comic actor who committed suicide just months after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, had his secrets. Laughing on the outside, dying on the inside. His daughter Zelda, scrambling to understand her father’s “permanent solution to a temporary problem,” wondered aloud to the media why the love so many had offered him couldn’t rescue him.…
Of all the ways we excel at wasting things in our culture, we are at our wasted worst when it comes to our words. Because we don’t know any better, we substitute hollow banter for meaningful seed-planting. For example, at the health club the other day I overheard this conversation between two guys that I’ve heard a billion times, in one iteration or another… Guy #1: Hey, how are you?…
