I had the great honor of reading the first draft of Stanley Hauerwas’ upcoming memoir, Hannah’s Child, over a year ago. It was surreal for me to read what will no doubt be a defining work from one of my favorite theologians (and biggest personal influences)—in Microsoft Word on my computer?!

Either way, the man was no machine. He didn’t preach the life of holiness and sanctification because it came easy. But he never stopped preaching—that sense of prophetic compulsion drove him to continue to seek and to teach the life “made perfect in love.”

When I first started reading any actual Wesley for myself, I had no taste for him. He seemed austere and humorless to me, even severe (and even now, I have never heard anybody accuse of him of being a funny guy)...

To have Jesus conceived by the Holy Spirit without remembering He is born of Mary is to embrace a spirituality that lacks particularity, place, context...

To attempt to understand anything meaningful about the life of Jesus apart from the third person of the Trinity would be…well, inconceivable...

I do think the way I believe in God is fundamentally Pentecostal. That’s a way of saying my belief is more a product of being assaulted by God than convinced of God...

Over against the rationalistic terms that came to dominate conversations surrounding Christian faith in the 20th century, the apostle’s creed concedes nothing to the language of defensibility. Here is a brash, audaciously simple claim that there is no reality, no apologetic, no system more fundamental than God...

I am participating in a book project due out later this year called Pentecostals and Peacemaking: Heritage, Theology and the 21st Century. A team of wonderful Pentecostal scholars that I love and respect are contributing. Stanley Hauerwas is doing a foreword...

Pastor Martin interviews Jim and Deborah Womble directors of the Kibera Kids Center, an orphanage in the largest slum in Africa--an area ravished by the AIDS pandemic...

While followers of Jesus eagerly anticipate the return of Jesus, they don't chuck out their responsibility to the marginalized like spoiled 80's rock bands staying in a 5 star hotel just for the night...

While many Christians have accepted a false choice between prayer and justice, they are inseparable in Scripture and Christian tradition...

While many Christians have accepted a false choice between prayer and justice, they are inseparable in Scripture and Christian tradition...

As global Pentecostalism continues to reshape the character of Christianity (second in size now only to Catholicism, and rapidly gaining), it is not surprising that the shape of corporate worship is transformed as well....

Today I went trespassing. On the journey I was heartbroken, frightened and still later, bizarrely inspired. I had just finished up with a productive but very long board meeting. I had been with my colleagues on the Western North Carolina Youth and Christian Education board, and we met for 8 hours. Mondays are never particularly great for me...