Dear Friends, Jesus People is building an email list for their Wilson Abbey newsletter, most likely being sent out four times a year highlighting best events as well as providing exclusive content such as free eBooks, music downloads, interviews, and videos. Exclusive content means that the information or special offers will not be publicized on their website or social media […]

[This post of mine first appeared on the new Project12 website.] Paul is essentially first and foremost a hero of religion. The theological element in him is secondary. Naivete in him is stronger than reflection; mysticism stronger than dogmatism; Christ means more to him than Christology, God more than the doctrine of God. He is far more a man of […]

This is one of those self-indulgent posts that those coming here for commentary on politics may not find interesting. Consider yourself warned (wink). In 1975, I couldn’t wait to escape Fort Benton. I was an angst-filled 18-year old when I went off to Gordon College near Wenham, Massachussetts, leaving my childhood life in Montana behind. I seemed designed for the […]

Exit one mile—meeting temptation on the straight and narrow   by Jon Trott (Issue #66)   Listen, PUNK! Stop your blubbering and take a look around. Here you are, stuck in a ditch ten miles from nowhere, and you don’t even know how it happened. Or do you? Blow your nose while I explain it to you. Somebody doesn’t like […]

We all are in a process which in effect is a constant growing, even re-inventing of ourselves. That can have a good side if the reinvention builds upon what is right and good and lasting (I’m thinking for myself of my Christian faith). But reinvention in our culture is sold to us as imperative. Beware the life narrative that starts […]

Two college students, a man and a woman, are friends. They each are looking for a roommate to share an apartment with, and decide there’s nothing wrong with the two of them platonically sharing one. A preacher who is married has grown quite close to another woman on his staff, and spends increasing amounts of time with her. More and […]

Solzhenitsyn and his wife Natalia. Every teen has his idols; Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), famous author who was imprisoned for years under the Soviet regime, was one of mine. I bought volume one of his grim, great Gulag Archipelago (Prison Islands) trilogy, and it spent the summer of 1974 with me. I sat in our old GMC grain truck during harvest, […]

When I heard about the Boston marathon bombings — it happened via TV in a North Dakota seniors’ residence my wife’s parents live in — tears lept to my eyes and that terrible, familiar taste of 9/11 rage rose up inside. This time there was no creepy Osama bin Laden character to blame. Two young guys, foreign yes but also […]

I’ve lived in intentional community here at Jesus People USA for the past thirty six years and counting. And I’m going to say it. Sometimes I just hate community. Yes, I mean it. Community is the place where people you’ve lived with for decades still have a peculiar knack for getting on your last nerve. Community is where some cheerful […]

So. Anthony Weiner is in the news again. The first time his sexting scandal made the news, I began writing this column but stopped in order to adopt a gentler tone. This time around, after it was revealed he continued sexting and sending nude photos to various women well after the initial scandal cost him his job, I have decided […]