The Thing in the Bushes is a book about corporate blind spots. Authors Kevin Graham Ford and James D. Osterhaus point out that most leaders of companies or other organizations know "something is seriously wrong, but they can't see it. Something unidentified and insidious is lurking in the shadows like a 'thing in the bushes,' and it has the organization in a death grip." Through careful research, ...

I have two friends who are best friends. Each was the best man in the other's wedding. They talk every day, sometimes more than once, on their cell phones. They live only a few blocks from each other. Yet recently, one told me that he hadn't seen his best friend in two months—two months! That's more than a hundred phone calls, and countless chances to hop in the car or walk a few blocks to see ...

Spiritual formation is so often couched in more individualistic terms, that it's easy to forget the important role the church community plays in our growth as individuals. In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott shares a story she once heard from her minister that illustrates well the necessary presence of others in our journey of faith:

When [my minister] was about seven, her best friend got lost ...

Without a doubt, my all-time favorite animal is the duck-billed platypus. It appeals to my nonconformist instincts because it breaks so many rules of biology. Consider: The platypus has a flat, rubbery bill, no teeth, and webbed feet, like a duck. Yet it has a furry body and beaver-like tail, and nurses its young like a mammal.

But wait—it walks with a lizard gait and lays leathery eggs like ...

A few years ago, an old acquaintance of mine served as a police officer in a northern native settlement in Canada. One day a rabid wolf wandered into the aboriginal settlement. My friend eventually shot it, but not before it attacked a young man and his grandmother in their home, making kindling out of a chair the young man used to protect himself from his attacker.

There were about 150 sled dogs in ...

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, pastor, and martyr (1906–1945)

With some 30 million people now involved world-wide [in online, virtual reality video games], there is mounting concern that some are squandering—even damaging—their real lives by obsessing over their "second" ones. That's always been a concern with videogames, but a field of study suggests that the boundary between virtual worlds and reality may be more porous than experts previously ...

The map of global Christianity that our grandparents knew has been turned upside down. At the start of the 20th century, only ten percent of the world's Christians lived in the continents of the south and east. Ninety percent lived in North America and Europe, along with Australia and New Zealand. But at the start of the 21st century, at least 70 percent of the world's Christians live in the non-Western ...

I learned an enduring lesson about grace from my church's response to Adolphus, a young black man with a wild, angry look in his eye. Every inner-city church has at least one Adolphus. He had spent some time in Vietnam, and most likely his troubles started there. He could never hold a job for long. His fits of rage and craziness sometimes landed him in an asylum.

If Adolphus took his medication on ...

The following is a testimony given at Emmanuel Reformed Church in Paramount, California:

My name is Penny, and I am a single mother of five children. Three years ago, when my youngest child was a year old, a succession of events destroyed the life I had known, but through God's grace, I was given the life I have now.

I was in a relationship with someone for 10 years, and I felt my life was good. He ...