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Christian Smith

Kids These Days

(Continuing thoughts on trends.  What’s going on with youth and emerging adults?) It started with reading Generation Me.  Well, no, actually, it started with noticing something different in my college students’ classroom responses.  Somewhere between the late 1990s and the

Stephen Rankin January 23, 2013January 23, 2013 Christian Life, Emerging adults, Higher and Theological Education, Ministry, Religion, The Church, United Methodism No Comments Read more

Christian Witness in a Diversifying Society

(Happy New Year.  2013 is off and running and the next handful of posts will look at significant trends that call for wise, morally sensitive, thoughtful Christian witness.) You may have read or heard that the 113th Congress just installed

Stephen Rankin January 9, 2013January 9, 2013 Christian Life, Doctrine/Theology, Emerging adults, Ministry, The Church, United Methodism 5 Comments Read more

Effective Consent

If you spend much time on a college campus, read college ministry-related blogs, or talk to students (or their parents), sooner or later you will run into talk about the problems of students consuming too much alcohol and “hooking up”

Stephen Rankin December 7, 2012December 7, 2012 Emerging adults, General, Higher and Theological Education, Religion 2 Comments Read more

What Retching Has to Do with Moral Vision

(Warning: this blog contains graphic material not suitable for weak stomachs.) Since when did watching people vomit become funny? I admit, I do not watch these TV shows, so maybe it was just a coincidence. Last week, I watched my

Stephen Rankin November 8, 2011 Emerging adults, General, Religion, The Church 1 Comment Read more

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Perhaps I too easily take to heart the coffee cup “de-motivator” I have about blogging: “Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.”  As a delinquent blogger, this saying makes me

Stephen Rankin August 1, 2011 Christian Life, Emerging adults, Higher and Theological Education, Religion, The Church No Comments Read more
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Meet Steve

I serve as Executive Director of the Spiritual Maturity Project, a ministry some of us have recently started.  For 25 years I worked in higher education as a professor and chaplain and before that as a pastor.  I love to help people grapple with big and basic questions to grow into real ,grown-up Christian discipleship.

I ruminate on all manner of theological, biblical, historical, and cultural topics. I believe followers of Jesus need to be more like members of Issachar’s tribe, able to read the times. Read more

 

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