I titled my last article WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE, noting the fact that there is a new denomination in the Christian faith world: THE GLOBAL METHODIST CHURCH. I know this raises questions, “Isn’t this going against the stream?”   In a study published in 2022, Pew Research Center projected that if the rate […] The post WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE AS A METHODIST appeared first on Maxie Dunnam ..read more

What a time to be alive! I don’t know many people…in fact, I don’t know anybody that is making that observation with the emotion I make it. And with all sorts of reasons, including personal timing.  What a time to be alive.   Our two national political parties are heard to spew more hatred than […] The post WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE appeared first on Maxie Dunnam ..read more

O.J. Simpson, the Juice, died on April 10, at age 76. One news columnist opened his story with these words, “It marked the end of a long and turbulent life marked by poverty. survival, riches, violence, and stardom.” The centerpiece of the television reporting was a string of limousine-type vans…the second one in the line, white; the others black. O.J. was in white van, being brought to Los Angeles, to “the law,” accused of killing his second wife. In the decades before, he was known as the Juice…a Heisman Trophy winner, Hall of Fame running back for USC and the Buffalo Bills. He was the fath ..read more

The article had a bold-face title: Methodists Keep Up With the Times. My friend had saved it from The Wall Street Journal (May 10) because he knew I would be interested.   Just reading the title, had I not known what the article was about, I would have pronounced a hearty Amen. The Christian gospel is relevant to life everywhere every day. As the primary demonstration plot and communicator of the Gospel, the church must keep up with the times to be relevant.   There is a difference, however, between keeping up with the times in order to be both pastoral and prophetic, and giving sanc ..read more

Years ago I came across a phrase that grabbed my attention. It was a season of my life when I was paying close attention to my own “spiritual state,” and as a result, seeking to develop particular spiritual disciplines. The phrase, a long obedience in the same direction, comes from Friedrich Nietzsche. This was his statement: “The essential thing in heaven and earth is… that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; thereby, results, and is always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” (Beyond Good and Evil, translated, Helen Zimmern ..read more

There is no if about death. The question is more accurately put, “When a person dies, shall he or she live again?” Not one line of the New Testament was written… not one sentence was penned apart from the conviction that He of whom these things were being written had conquered death and was alive forever. Death is inevitable, and nowhere is the fact put more starkly than by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “It is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Yet, in the Christian faith and experience, death is not the victor, and d ..read more

The preaching must have been powerful. In a recent cartoon, as he leads his parents from worship, Dennis the Menace confronts the preacher. “What happens when everyone stops sinning? What will you do?” While we are not strangers to sin, Dennis stuns us with his  statement and questions. We may not reflect or talk much about it. Yet, the great majority of theologians talk a lot about it. Often they use the term original sin, contending it is the root of all human problems. The truth is, there is nothing original about sin. It is a center piece in the Genesis story of th ..read more

I recently heard this story of a boy who desperately wanted a car for his sixteenth birthday. He didn’t hesitate in making that desire known. When that day finally arrived, he looked out the window, hopefully thinking that surely his new car would be there. But to his great disappointment it wasn’t. He asked his parents why he hadn’t gotten a car. The father responded, “Son,” there are three reasons. First, your grades are bad and you never seem to study like you should. Secondly, you don’t go to church and you don’t read the Bible every night. And thirdly, you’ve got that long hair and you wo ..read more

GOD IN OUR LIVES Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.(Ps. 37:7 RSV) A little boy was afraid to go to his room alone. He was assured by his mother that God was there, even though it was dark. He went to the door, peeked in, and said, “God, if you’re in there, don’t move an inch or you’ll scare me to death.” Unfortunately, that story is not too “far-out” in our experience. The God most of us know is one who, if he moves, will scare us to death. We know him as the author of the tragic death that came to a loved one through the tenacious claws of cancer. We see him in the earthqua ..read more

MAN DIMINISHED BY HIS OWN CREATION Maxie Dunnam   What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visiteth him? For thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honor. Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. (Ps. 8:46)   “Glass, Concrete, and Man” this was the caption beneath a picture in Dixie magazine. The picture was of the New Orleans’ new Federal Building. It was taken from a low vantage point where one looked up on a maze of stories, a complex of glass and concrete. On one of the stories a workman c ..read more