I have been trying to start a blog for a long time. The ideas were there, but the time was not. In the past several years I finished my doctoral work, wrote a dissertation, pastored a congregation through the pressures of COVID, stepped into full-time teaching, redesigned major parts of our curriculum, and began directing a growing set of non-degree programs. Each of these roles has been meaningful, but each carried its own weight, and writing for the wider world often slipped to the margins.
Even so, the questions that pulled me toward writing never went away. They grew stronger. I found myself returning to the same themes over and over. What is happening to the church. Why is our society so fractured. Where might people find a moral or spiritual center in a world that seems to have lost its bearings. And what kind of faith practices still matter in a time like this.
This initial series, Searching for a Center in a Fragmented World, is my attempt to begin answering those questions. It is not a complete map. It is a way of starting again.
I chose this title because I keep noticing the quiet symbols of change around me. Churches turned into cafés or apartments. Sanctuaries filled with new life but emptied of the communities that once gathered there. These buildings represent more than institutional loss. They point to something deeper. They point to a missing center.
For much of American history, churches gave shape to the moral landscape. They were imperfect centers, but they held a place in the imagination. They reminded people that compassion is not optional, that neighbors matter, and that life has responsibilities beyond the self. Today that shared center has weakened. For some, it has disappeared entirely.
This series is not a call to return to an idealized past. It is an attempt to understand how we arrived here, and to imagine what might grow now. I draw on the language of the sacred pole, an ancient symbol for the meeting point between the human and the holy. I am not calling for a revival of the old pole or a single religious center. I am asking how we might recover a sense of orientation in a time when we feel pulled apart.
In the pages that follow, I explore how cultural evangelicalism rose to fill the vacuum left by declining institutions. I examine how empathy eroded, and what that loss has done to our shared life. I look at the ways belief has become detached from moral action. And finally, I try to imagine what a new center might look like, one shaped not by nostalgia or control, but by compassion, integrity, and shared responsibility.
This series marks a beginning for my own writing life. I intend to keep going. My hope is that these reflections will open space for honest conversation, not only within churches, but among anyone who is searching for meaning in a fractured world. If these essays help even a few people find language for their own questions, then the work will have been worth the time.
So here we are, beginning again. And this time, I plan to keep writing.
