Tag Archives: church

Listen, I am not the kind of pastor who is going to tell you that your immortal soul is in jeopardy if you don’t come to church on Sunday.

Now, I realize that when folks announce that the Episcopal (or the Lutheran or the Presbyterian or the Roman Catholic or whatever) church is lost, they generally intend these words as a critique. But what if? What if, in the adventure that is life and faith, getting lost is sometimes necessary, sometimes important, sometimes good?

There are few things sadder to a minister than having your child tell you that “church is irrelevant to me.” That was the message my son gave on his eighteenth birthday when he informed me that he would not go back to church again.

What does it mean to be fully alive? The most important spiritual question is: what does it mean to live the good life?

U.S. religious congregations are marching to their own drums now more than ever. The National Congregations Study‘s latest look at the country’s churches, synagogues and mosques — the third wave of studies that began in 1998 — finds more congregations:

I know I have a soul, because I can feel its weight. It’s heavy, like a lead apron I can’t remove. Sometimes I fear suffocation. Sometimes I pray for it.