By Baruch Levine

Scholars have achieved a common discourse that enables them to study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together, despite confessional differences. This article explores how this is possible and what benefits may evolve.

By Joseph Crockett

Bible engagement is an intentional, goal-directed activity. As language shapes an individual’s thought categories and empowers him or her to transcend those categories, engagement with biblical narratives involves social processes that can build and transform character. Individuals and communities have the capacity to be informed by the Word and the narratives of Judeo-Christian faith traditions—to become like Christ.

By Harriet Hill, with Peter Edman

The focus here is on the crisis barriers that severe trauma constructs between victims and an encounter with God’s Word; and how the project of American Bible Society, She’s My Sister, helps these people learn that crimes committed against them do not bring them shame and shows them how to be set free from their pain.

By Robert LaRochelle

Current economic realities and trends in church demographics have led an increasing number of churches to consider downsizing the job description of their pastors from full-time to part-time.

By Joleyn T. Stokes

If you come to this Table with the passion of Christ, with a sincere heart, willing and open to unite with Him, then you will eat this bread and drink this cup as a sign of your sincere commitment to seek and experience the presence of God. Communion: What’s it all about? It’s about joining as one with God.

by Minka Shura Sprague

We had a sacramental blitz in my church one weekend late in summer this year. Within 24 hours, we had celebrated 4 of the 7 traditional sacraments of the church – Holy Baptism, Holy Eucharist, Holy Matrimony and Unction, the anointing of one who is ill. In this last instance, we went straight to Burial.

by Nancy Bloomer

It is difficult to conceive of a single, isolated human in a state of shalom. An important aspect of shalom—which I understand to mean
perfection, wholeness, health, and fullness—is belonging. Being rooted in and connected to a community in all its particularity of people,
place, and things is a necessary ingredient for a sustained sense of well-being.

by Linda Lee Clader

Our Christian home is now, in ministry with Christ and through Christ, as members of his living Body. And that means that we are constantly on the move—not because we are on a quest for some distant prize or goal, but because we share Christ’s continuing mission of service.

by Dr. Keith A. Russell

I hope that you will find this issue of THE LIVING PULPIT to be a stimulating discussion of the challenge of Easter preaching. There is no doubt across diverse Christian traditions about the centrality of Easter for Christian faith and practice. The question raised in this issue of our journal is not about the importance or centrality of Easter but about how to present this event at the end of the 20th century.

By Dr. Keith A. Russell

What would happen to our Easter pulpits if we simply sought to roll the stone away so that people could confront the forces of death in their own lives? Do we dare challenge the principalities and powers of our age with the implications of a God who is both present in life and who lives beyond the boundaries of death?

By Rev. Allen Boesak

In the Good News of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the resurrection is the greatest news. It is the most exciting piece in the Gospels. In our church calendar Easter occupies a special place and we live towards it and from it. At Easter the church sings: the Lord has risen! At Easter the church confesses: where, o death, is your victory? Where, o death, is your sting?

By Dr. Donovan Russell

We are undergoing a period of reflection and questioning that stretch from to the most personal questions of how we wish to be spending our time as well as our treasure to the largest issues of international cooperation.