Connectional Addiction: Retirement, Identity, and the Hidden Temptation of Ministerial Influence By Mike Powers Last June (2025) I retired for the third time since 2017. Obviously, I am not very good at this. With each retirement, I experienced some common and rather odd feelings. Some of these feelings reveal the
Mary Ward, that great Christian educator of the 17th century, used to tell her sisters: “Do your best and God will help.” The notion that God can and will help us in our predicaments is axiomatic to Biblical faith. It sets the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God
We are caught in the appreciations of things by endowing them with names, but the nature of the world is nonverbal, has nothing to do with words at all. We cannot apprehend the true nature of reality beyond the veil of the nominal.—A reflection on Jung from Cormac McCarthy’s personal
The following is the next installment in a series of articles that accompany the Treasures from the Life of Jesus jigsaw puzzle. To read the other articles in this series, CLICK HERE. If you haven’t gotten your copy of the puzzle yet, CLICK HERE. In honor of General Conference weekend,
The following is the sixth in a series of articles giving greater detail from the stories behind the hidden things in our Treasures from the Life of Jesus jigsaw puzzle. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, BUY IT HERE. If you already have yours, bookmark or print this page so you
The story of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Guadalupe, Mexico is one of high drama and therefore eminently memorable.[1] It is also in some ways achingly familiar, drawing on tropes common to the Christian tradition. The story goes like this: In December 1531, ten years after the conquest