As I watched the news about the conflict in Iraq, I wondered if I would get a phone call. Sure enough, it came in January 2004: "Colonel Morsch, sir, we've received orders on you, and you're being sent to Iraq." I met with my co-workers to prepare for my deployment.

"When you're on the mission field, do you do anything besides travel around and eat?"

"When you're on the mission field, do you do anything besides travel around and eat?"

In our earlier article [May/June 2009], we set out the big picture of the good news of the gospel. We showed how countercultural the gospel is both in overt examples and more subtle ways. At the same time, there are texts in Scripture, when taken out of their first century context, which appear to run against the grain of the countercultural direction of the gospel. In some Christian traditions, a few of them are used as proof texts to exclude women from ministry.

What are we to make of these texts?

The six people sitting across from me were so powerful that it was illegal for them to be in the same room. They had to get special permission from the government to meet. And yet, here they were in a Warner Brothers board room, six of the most influential people in television: the network vice presidents in charge of programming. Five men and one woman sat along an oak table framed by a television screen the size of Kentucky on the wall behind them.

The denomination's Centennial Celebration that took place October 5 included 18,000 Nazarene churches in all 24 time zones. In many churches, celebratory events spanned the days and weeks before and after October 5.

The year 2005 brought catastrophic weather, natural disasters, Nazarene compassion in action, and record increases of 1,009 new congregations worldwide, and 100,000 new Nazarenes. ¡Gloria a Dios! Praise the Lord!

We often teach that the “Reformation period” ended in the late 1700’s, as the separation of church and state became viewed as a powerful and preferred ideal within Western political imaginations and structures. Interestingly, however, there are some who include the Reformation as merely the first half of the current “Modern period.”¹

While this is certainly debatable, I think one helpful insight about this perspective is the way it reframes our role in the life of the church universal.

Woman's place. Those two words can flare up intense controversy whenever they are uttered.

Anyone familiar with music can attest to the chaos that ensues when there are problems with tempo. This is especially true when singing together, as in Sunday morning worship. When a song is too fast to sing all the words or too slow to capture the intended energy, something feels “off.”

Even worse, when members of the band or orchestra are playing at different tempos, even the most talented musicians can sound like beginners!