13 articles from 11 issues, 1996 to 2025
Gen Z talks about romance as an unbearable rulebook crushing them. Kosari hears the same paralysis in our churches, where marriage has become an idol no one can quite picture. She turns to Isaiah 52, where the Lord woos his Jerusalem out of captivity, for a different vision.
If the church's calling is to be stewards of the mysteries of God, theology is the work that keeps us trustworthy with what's been entrusted. Small unfolds Paul's image and asks what theological stewardship looks like in session meetings, confirmation classes, and Sunday worship.
Bergler's earlier book diagnosed how American churches absorbed the values of adolescence; this follow-up asks what maturity looks like and how congregations get there. Offered as an introduction to From Here to Maturity, with the editor's recommendation to read both volumes.
Presbyterians prize mature leadership, but American Christianity has spent seven decades absorbing the values of adolescence. Bergler summarizes his award-winning book on how youth ministry shaped the wider church and what we lost by treating perpetual youthfulness as a virtue.
Pelikan called the Reformation a tragic necessity, and Gatewood holds the two halves of that phrase together. The piece reads as both celebration of the Word's work in the Reformers' generation and lament over the divisions their work left for us to inherit.
Bruce Metzger spent his career as one of America's foremost biblical scholars but began as a Sunday School superintendent. These late-career reflections on what he would do if he had a classroom again are practical, simple, and clear-eyed about what religious instruction is actually for.
Proverbs uses contrast to teach: life or death, wisdom or folly, no comfortable middle. Hering brings the Proverbs' grammar of formation to bear on the painful experience of catechized children who walk away anyway, and finds the tradition has more to say than parents often imagine.
What happens to a church that treats the Bible like letters it no longer needs? Mary Holder Naegeli, drawing on Nehemiah 8, calls Presbyterians to read the Word aloud, explain it, and receive it again with joy.
How does what we believe shape the way we see life and death? This Presbyterians Pro-Life curriculum, three sessions with questions for discussion, sets out a biblical worldview, the authority of Scripture and what it means to be made in God’s image.
What is a family, and who gets to say? Ed Vitagliano examines a documentary made for schoolchildren and argues that its appeal to love quietly redefines the word family to include same-sex couples.
What happens when one generation of a church stops teaching the next? Theresa Ip Froehlich reads the book of Judges beside the PC(USA) today, and argues that congregations must teach doctrine and recover the Book of Confessions as their tool.
Can a children’s catechism be warm and still leave out sin? Stephen Eyre reads the PCUSA’s proposed First Catechism beside the Heidelberg and the Shorter Catechism and finds that its loving tone comes without a moral dimension, a clear atonement or the Word of God.
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