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Baptism is often contentious. It breeds arguments and division, splitting congregations and families.
Suicide is a deeply personal and all-too-present reality in Christian congregations.
In popular culture, the ancient Council of Nicaea is sometimes seen as a conspiracy to consolidate power. Some Baptist, evangelical, and nondenominational churches are resistant to creeds, and Christians who recite the Nicene Creed weekly or at least regularly in Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant traditions don’t appreciate the depth of the theology in what they are saying. Still, many theologians and historians hope that celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed in 2025 can unify global Christians.
Psalms for Families is a devotional e-book for the entire family designed to help parents explore the riches of the book of Psalms with their children and teens. These devotionals will help parents learn more about the psalms as they teach about praise, prayer, and lament.
Many consider the author of Hebrews the most adept storyteller in the New Testament due to the epistle’s comprehensiveness and rhetorical finesse.
Explore how Christians in the earliest centuries of Christianity preached and prayed about illness, pain, and health care and shaped practices of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and funerals in response to illness and injury, including during pandemics—all so that we can learn from their pastoral, theological, and practical instincts as we seek to be faithful witnesses to Christ in our own globally diverse contexts.
While completing a grant on playfulness in worship, Sarah Travis began to see connections between play and trauma. Worshiping God through embodied, imaginative, and story-based practices helps people and congregations stuck in trauma begin to move toward healing and new life.
Lilly Endowment Inc. encourages intergenerational worship through its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative. Worshiping together can include prayer, music, scripture, drama, visual arts, movement, testimony, and sacraments. Three grant projects include children’s worship music or songwriting for children to create immersive intergenerational worship experiences.
Lilly Endowment Inc. encourages intergenerational worship through its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative. Worshiping together can include not only music, but prayer, scripture, drama, visual arts, movement, testimony, and sacraments. However, these three grant projects include or spotlight children’s songs or songwriting for children.
You’ve probably heard that we should take all of ourselves to God in prayer. But does God really care about doing laundry, aging rapidly, fighting traffic, or spending time with friends? God does care, according to W. David O. Taylor. His Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life offers prayers about mundane sorrows and joys.
Many Christians understand the liturgical calendar as a way to follow the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pentecost season reminds us of the Holy Spirit’s work. But Leopoldo Sánchez suggests a theological twist for Advent and Christmas to remind us of the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of Jesus—and in our own lives.
Advent and Christmas present unexpected opportunities to remind us how the Holy Spirit empowers us to participate with and be more like Jesus Christ. The lectionary, visuals, cultural traditions, “Come, Holy Spirit” prayers, and songs can invite us into the trinitarian drama. Spoiler alert: these Spirit Christology approaches apply to every liturgical season.
