Magic and monsters. With the collapse of Yugoslavia in the late 20th century, small-scale independence movements formed along ethnic and religious fault lines in the Balkan region. Croats and Serbs separated from one another and retreated into religious ghettoes. This "Balkanization of Europe" led directly to Bosnian and Serbian ethnic cleansing in 1992.
Enlightenment and entertainment. An essential architectural feature is missing in most American churches. At one time it helped people become more purposeful – a quality sorely lacking in many Christians today.1 What’s the missing element? Is it fewer crosses, hymnals or the disappearance of pews? Nope. It’s the loss of graveyards.
Continuing an experiment. Does anyone remember how trumpets playing from a passing train save lives? When Christian Doppler arranged this experiment in 1845, he discovered that the trumpet pitch was higher when the train was approaching and then lower as the train passed and moved away. It’s called the Doppler Effect. His experiment is the…
Imagine this. Here’s an easy way to see the disconnect between Sunday and Monday. Ask a friend to draw the first five images that come to mind when he or she hears these words: worship, work, ministry, the arts and service. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, we now have five thousand words depicting…
Florist shops. Today’s universities are florist shops selling cut flowers. Ask any business, political science – or any science – major. Every discipline was originally rooted in Christian theology. Yet we’d be hard pressed to find a college student who appreciates this. Today’s colleges “offer students neither a coherent view of the point of a…
Saving Civilization? In the mid-500s, missionaries from Ireland boarded small boats and began to come ashore in Britain and Europe. The once great Roman Empire had long ago gone dark. The great texts of classical Western civilization had largely been destroyed by the hordes of barbarians that had breached Rome’s borders. It was left to…
Hire a prophet. Profits are like breathing, says Max DePree, former head of Herman Miller, Inc. They aren’t the goal of business. They are, however, pretty good evidence of whether or not an enterprise is alive. Prophets are another indicator of health. That’s right – prophets. Marshall McLuhan said every institution needs something like them.
I ate seven bowls of Cocoa Krispies one evening at summer camp. If you had asked me why, I would have said, I wanted to. I didn’t know it then, but I was depicting how God made us to live according to the “four-chapter” gospel.
No Labor Day. If you love Labor Day you might not enjoy heaven that much. But don’t worry. Anyone can acquire a taste for eternity. The key is unpacking the origins of Labor Day, work and holidays. It also requires changing the way we imagine heaven.
Box office and Bible. If friends won’t try the Bible, take them to see The Bourne Ultimatum instead. In fact, watch the entire Bourne trilogy. It takes us right back to the Bible. While Bourne’s story might not look like our day-to-day life, his life does look a lot like the Bible’s age-to-age story. Connecting…