Opinion

Your last and perhaps most meaningful gift to your family is to clearly communicate how you wish to be remembered at your funeral or memorial service. By clearly communicating your funeral plans, you ease the strain and burden on family at this stressful time.

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) -- Who wants to continue approaches that launch only 10 percent of young believers to change the world? After a half-century in youth ministry, Richard Ross calls for a desperately-needed radical reevaluation if we wish to see more enduring faith in our youth after they become adults.

Dear Luke, I am writing to complain about the start to your book — the one that, according to you, is a “Gospel,” not the sequel on the acts of the apostles. It’s mostly good. Some good stories, clever lines, interesting characters. However, I take offense at how you decided to politicize Christmas in the first couple chapters.

Regardless of that joy we have as we celebrate together this holiday season, as adults we also realize there are men and women who are willing to sacrifice their holidays with family so that we can enjoy ours.

(RNS) — One of the holiday season’s biggest ad campaigns has spectacularly backfired. The commercial for Peloton, which sells $2,200 indoor exercise bikes that can interface with the company’s studio-based spin classes, went viral for all the wrong reasons.

One hundred years ago, a bold experiment died. But it could be more than a historical footnote; it should serve as a prophetic whisper that things are not as they should be.

This summer, while vacationing in Yellowstone National Park, I noticed how many tourists were carrying backpacks. I learned the hard way that not everyone who straps on one of these totes is socially responsible.

1 John was written because people within the church John was affiliated with were having a hard time liking, let alone loving, each other. This is the paradox of the Christian life: God chooses to love people who are sometimes unlovable and then asks them to share that same love with people who are just like them.

Mysterious people with political connections arrived from a country off in the East. They brought news the ruler did not like.

(RNS) — The scripture readings for the First Sunday of Advent speak to us of the second coming of Christ (not the coming of baby Jesus at Christmas). This is not an imaginary exercise, either, because Jesus is coming, we just don't know when.