Some more recommended articles

Higher calling, lower wages:

This article about the disappearance of middle-class clergy highlights a problem that is actually a confluence of several factors:

1) the problem of the decline of the American middle class in general - a problem which appears poised to accelerate among millennials as they mature
2) the problem of the relative decline of the Church as a major social institution in our culture, and in particular the loss of status that clergymen once enjoyed as important and respected members of society, and
3) the expanding costs of higher education in general and the seminaries' marriage to a "professional graduate school" model of preparing ministers that may not serve either denominations nor individual clergy as well as it might.  Indeed many younger clergy in my area are encouraged to commit to a 3-year continuing education program on church leadership, even after attending a 3-to-4 year seminary program precisely because the seminaries - married as they are to the latest speculative theological fads - do not often prepare us well for many of the more practical challenges of our work.

The phsycological benefits of walking in nature:

I love to hike.  Unfortunately the daytime temperature is above 90 degress for about 4 months of the year where I live, so I am unable to do so much at the moment.
I like to say I go hiking so much because "I am looking for elves."  In truth I wonder if I am not actually looking for Eden.  I wonder if that is not a deep spiritual yearning that most of us feel: to search for a primal harmony with nature (go read Genesis chapter 2) that we sense has been somehow lost (Genesis 3).  It turns out that people - in particular urban-dwellers - who are surrounded by artificial environments all day actually suffer from various mental health problems due to lack of the natural, the beautiful, and the God-given in their lives.
Hmmm...

On a related note is this:

7 Ways Electronics Quietly harm our Mental Health:

While I do keep up with mainstream news sources such as NPR and BBC and CNN, I am obviously also a believer in the alternative news and analysis found in many blogs and websites.  This article comes from a source - Off The Grid News - which is certainly alternative.  This is from the solar powered, organic farming, urban-homesteading, environmentalist/disaster preparedness, self-reliance crowd.  Whether or not you are inclined to trust the source, the 7 Reasons that our tablets, smartphones, laptops and the like are said to harm our mental health and our relationships seem to ring true to my experiences as a young person, and my experiences of working with (slightly younger) college-age folks at UL Lafayette a few years back.

The Decline (and Fall?) of Religious Freedom in America:

Most of the conversation I have heard on the topic of religious freedom since the recent Supreme Court ruling to re-define civil marriage have either come from traditionalist Christians or from secularists (who may or may not be nominally Christian - like a friend of mine who recently expressed her hope that churches would lose their tax-exempt status in order that the government should have more money to help out the poor - yes, folks, college-educated people who grew up in church are really saying this).
Anyways, this article comes from a rather different perspective: that of a Jewish author at Mosaic Magazine.  The article also includes links to a couple of responses from other Jewish authors (both agreeing and disagreeing with the thesis).  I think their perspective adds something unique to this conversation, having been a religious minority (and in many places, a despised one) since the founding of this country.

Articles on young people seeking liturgical worship

I am one of THOSE young people (though a little less young with each passing day).  I love the liturgy, the creeds, and the sacraments of the church.  I love the "rootedness" and the beauty of historical patterns of worship.  I love that the liturgy doesn't try to be trendy but just is what it is, and always has been (mimicing as it does the patterns of eternal worship in heaven as they are glimpsed in Scripture - particularly in The Book of Isaiah and The Revelation to John).

As a pastor this means I find myself often seeking to ensure that our worship services follow the basic pattern and include the basic content that is handed down to us in our Book of Worship, which builds off of the more ancient liturgical heritage of Anglicanism.  For example, in Holy Week I re-worked a special Holy Thursday service that was inherited from a previous pastor who created it many years ago.  The basic idea of the service was a good one with precedents ancient and modern; in re-working his service I simply incorporated liturgical prayers, lectionary readings, and other elements that have historically been a part of the Holy Thursday experience of Christians and yet were missing.

I've been thinking about this as I've run across not one but two more good articles on young people being attracted to the liturgy, and why that trend is happening.  As far as I can see, it is still a pretty small trend; a minority report among young American Christians.  But I believe it is a genuine movement of the Spirit that is part of a larger "rebirth of orthodoxy" (to use Tom Oden's phrase).

SO, why might I (and maybe some others too) be interested in reconnecting with the "old-school" practices of faith and worship?  Check out these pieces:
5 Reasons Young People are Seeking Old Ways of Doing Church (which is a short and "spot-on" piece)
AND
Why Millennials Long for Liturgy (a longer, more in-depth, article with more personal stories)

'Liberation' in St. Luke's Gospel

I've been slowly plodding through Richard Hays' excellent book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament for some time now; as a pastor I've made a commitment to the church and to myself to stay academically and theologically sharp, and I try to build serious reading into my work schedule.

I ran across a great quote in the closing remarks of his chapter on Luke.  It seems to me that in many circles Christianity can easily "blur" into a kind of political activism - whether of the conservative kind ("let's win the culture wars and take back America for Jesus - by electing conservatives") which I encountered attending Baptist churches in North Louisiana, or of the liberal kind ("let's liberate the poor and oppressed and do something about all the social and political institutions that keep people down - by electing liberals").

Now we should indeed be working to call the precious people in our and every culture to yield to the Lordship of Jesus and that part of this should indeed mean caring for the poor and helping out the needy.  But have you ever noticed how little Jesus talked about reforming the political institutions of his day?  I've been struck recently by the fact that he did indeed encourage paying taxes to Caesar, considering all the ungodly things that the Roman Empire was likely to do with that money...

Anyways, here is Richard Hays' comment:
Because the language of liberation has been so widely appropriated in the interest of various political causes, it is important to specify what Luke does and does not have in mind.  The book of Acts gives no evidence of the Apostles seeking to reform political structures outside the church, either through protest or by seizing power.  Instead, Luke tells the story of the formation of a new human community - the church - in which goods are shared and wrongs are put right.  In this way the apostolic testimony to the resurrection is made effectual.  The question that Luke-Acts puts to the church - then and now - is not "Are you reforming society?" but rather "Is the power of the resurrection at work among you?"

Now that is a potent question...

What happens when a Christian dies?

United Methodist pastor and theologian Matt O'Reilly keeps a blog called "Orthodoxy for Everyone" (formerly "Incarnatio") that I like to check from time to time.  As the title implies he writes to call everyone to a Biblical and orthodox Christian faith, worldview, and lifestyle.  I recently watched a video he had posted - part of the Seedbed/7 minute Seminary series - discussing the Biblical teaching concerning the afterlife of believers in Christ.  It is a quite good and straight-forward presentation of the classic and Biblical Christian teaching that has often been over-simplified or 'watered down' in Christian preaching and pop-theology.

Here is some great material for funeral sermons as well: What happens when a Christian dies?

Becoming "Gospel Catholics" by lifting up the cross

This video is a sermon by Bishop Sutton of the Anglican Church in North America on the preaching of the cross drawing from 1 Corinthians chapter 1:17-21.  He is addressing a gathering of Anglo-catholics (that is, Anglicans who, while not Roman Catholic, do emphasis the catholicity of their tradition) that recently took place in Texas (I had half a mind to try to go, but at least I can watch - and share - some of it online).

He points out that, in this passage Paul equates "preaching the Gospel" with "preaching the cross."  That is a word many of us preachers need to hear again and again.  He also points out that the preaching of the cross is intimately connected to the sacraments - which themselves preach the cross with outward signs rather than with a sermon AND (connected to this) that preaching the cross was how Paul addressed the disunity of the Corinthian believers.  The message of the cruciform Savior and the call to cruciform discipleship in union with Him is God's answer to the tendency of Christians (in our still-fallen nature) toward division.

Interesting and edifying stuff in here.