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Nathan Kirkpatrick: Are churches counting what counts?
Beyond average Sunday attendance, there are other ways to measure the role of churches in the community. Things like footprint, partners, impact and calling also tell a story.
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Mayra Zelaya plays with her son Eliel Zelaya during a church service at San Antonio Mennonite Church. Zelaya, a Honduran immigrant, has been in the United States with her family for 14 months. The church is helping her and other migrants and asylum seekers by providing shelter and resources. Photo by Wendi Poole
A Texas congregation caring for immigrants gains a new understanding of Christianity as a 'trauma-healing movement'
For the past three years, members of a Mennonite church in San Antonio have welcomed people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The experience has changed them and their understanding of the gospel.
Cover detail from "How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You're Going" by Susan Beaumont
Susan Beaumont: Leading in an in-between season
The usual tools of leadership aren’t effective during times like the one the church finds itself in now -- those liminal seasons when the path forward isn’t clear, says the author of “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going.”
Photo illustration by Jessamyn Rubio
Top 10 Faith & Leadership stories from 2019
We published more than 120 original stories in 2019, from articles by journalists to essays by pastors and scholars to interviews with thinkers and activists. Here are 10 standouts we hope you’ll find inspiring and thought provoking.
Book cover detail
Joshua Swamidass: Opening up the conversation about Adam and Eve with science
Instead of trying to get everyone to agree in debates over human origins, the Christian biologist aims to have an open, informed dialogue in his new book.
Carol Edwards, second from left, whose mother was one of the people whose medical debt was forgiven by a coalition of Chicago churches, worships at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. At far left is Monica Brown Moss, first lady of Trinity UCC. Photo by Dawn R. Stephens, Trinity UCC
How a network of Chicago churches is helping erase more than $5 million in medical debt
By fundraising and buying the medical debt of strangers, a group of Chicago congregations and the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt bring relief during the holiday season.
Book cover detail from "Revolution of Values."
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Reclaiming public faith from the religious right
The author and activist tells how the religious right monopolized public faith and family values, and how Christians can change the conversation.
Photo courtesy of Jessica Young Brown
Jessica Young Brown: Don't be afraid of a future with more bivocational ministers
With collaboration and clear communication, bivocational ministry can be an opportunity to innovate and thrive, says a professor and counselor for ministers.
Image courtesy of Ralph West
Ralph West: You can disagree and still come together
The world is made up of people with differing opinions, the pastor of The Church Without Walls said. Yet it’s possible to be friends in the presence of love.
Artists Caleb Clark, Christopher Holt and Jill Hooper compare a tracing of preliminary drawings to the final composition of the fresco at Haywood Street Congregation. Holt is an artist trained in making frescoes; Clark and Hooper assisted him in the two-year-long project. Photos by John Warner/Warner Photography
A church's fresco project shows that everyone has sacred worth
A church dedicated to radical hospitality and welcome creates a fresco that permanently enshrines those values and the faces of those it serves.