I remember asking my supervisor for budget approval to purchase a new video camera. I was ready for him to tell me I was asking for too much money. I presented my request, and there was no discussion. It was a resounding “yes.”…
I’ve done 5,000 zoom calls over these past few months. You probably have too. On a recent one, someone asked me this pivotal question: “Jeanne, if a microphone were put in your hands and you were told that you could communicate any message to the Christian leadership world, but you could only use one sentence, what would you say?”…
More than three decades ago I showed up for my first day of work at Group Publishing, a 26-year-old amateur theologian and journalist trained in investigative reporting, about to mount the lowest rung on my career ladder. Six months later Thom Schultz, founder and CEO of Group, asked to meet with me… I remember the nervous, intimidated feeling I had as I walked the hallway to his office.…
Ever had a friend recommend something, so you try it, and then you realized… you hate it? How can something be “truly good” if not everyone agrees that it is truly good? John Krasinski’s online pandemic show Some Good News brought us a weekly dose of “good”—but how does his good compare to the way Jesus defines good? …
Like many of you, I’ve got ministry friends all over. When the rumblings of a quarantine first started, I reached out to a few of my closest friends to mine their perspective on what might happen. When reality set in, I reached back out to see what student ministry would look like inside our new reality.…
We’re washed over by waves of grief, fear, and uncertainty in our world right now. As followers of Jesus, we know that racism is contrary in every way to the heart of Jesus. And yet, it persists like the “weeds scattered in secret by the thief” in Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat and Weeds. …
On Pentecost Sunday Calebe Silva, a teenager in New Jersey, opened his church’s Zoom church service with a short reading from Isaiah, followed by a piercing lament over the grief and pain the African-American community is experiencing right now (in the wake of the protests over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police).…
Youth ministry has been around awhile—we have decades of paradigm shifts in the books. What started as a way to get illiterate kids off the street and into a new-and-improved morality morphed into a ticket to a pizza party and a gospel presentation.…
After co-hosting my church’s online service last weekend, I logged onto the service-stream of a friend’s church in another state. “Carl” (not his real name) was focusing on the “Hurry Sickness” that afflicts our culture (well before COVID-19 descended on us).…
Jesus is an artist, and he’s used the ugly raw material of the COVID-19 pandemic and re-fashioned it in ways we couldn’t conceive… We’ve all been dragged into a forced re-set—we’ve had to rely on Jesus, not our own ministry swagger or momentum, to feel our way forward.…
 Foundations: Some Good News){kind=link}
 Jesus and Racism){kind=link}
 Confessions){kind=link}
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