Ministry Matters - From trouble to hope—and the silence in between

A Word from the Editor Somewhere around week three of Eastertide, the Easter energy fades. The lilies are gone. The attendance has settled back to normal. And the news cycle has not gotten any better. This is where Jim Harnish's series does its most important work. Jim has been weaving together two unlikely conversation partners: the intimate resurrection stories of the Great Fifty Days, and the wartime sermons of Harry Emerson Fosdick, a pastor who preached hope to congregations whose sons were not coming home. Fosdick was preaching through a world war. The headlines were catastrophic. And week after week, he got back in the pulpit and preached the resurrection anyway—not by ignoring the darkness, but by insisting the light was real and older than the dark. These three pieces follow that same path. One sits with the disciples on the Emmaus road, walking toward a setting sun with nothing left to hope for. One asks the question most pastors have thought but few have said out loud: why is God so quiet when evil is so loud? One answers with the oldest claim in the Christian tradition—that the light has already proven itself stronger than the darkness, and that the question is only which one you are giving your allegiance to. That is not a small question for a week like this one. It may be the only question that matters. —Cameron The light that no darkness can put out by Jim Harnish "We don’t need to cramp Jesus’s metaphor with rigid literalism or smother it with syrupy sentimentality to sense the light that shines in the darkness. The purpose of biblical images of life after death is not to provide detailed knowledge of the chemical composition of the pearly gates or carat weight of golden streets, but to provide orientation for life before death." Learn More Why is God silent when evil rages? by Jim Harnish "Why doesn’t God get down here and do something about the ghastly mess we’ve made of things? If Christ is risen and goes before us, why doesn’t he get busy making some rough places plain and crooked ways straight?"  Read Now When have you found yourself asking God, "Where are you?" — and what did you do with the silence? Starting with trouble and ending with hope by Jim Harnish "The great news of the resurrection is that the Risen Christ still finds us on the road from the past, walks with us through the present, and gives us fresh hope for the future." Continue Reading

The second volume in a landmark three-volume collection, this meticulously annotated gathering of Charles Wesley's personal letters (1750–1765) brings together correspondence never before collected in print, complete with scriptural references and hymn citations. In Becoming a Friendlier Church, Matthew D. Kim calls attention to the crisis of unfriendliness that prevents many churches from welcoming new people into their community. Using concrete examples, Kim shows how even churches that think themselves friendly can unintentionally communicate insularity, apathy, busyness, prejudice, and the pursuit of comfort. Michael Carpenter makes a timely, pastoral case for recovering the Four Alls—the grace-centered framework that once sparked a movement—arguing that these nearly forgotten convictions about salvation's accessibility and transforming power are exactly what today's Methodists need to reclaim their identity and strengthen their witness.