Columbia Connections

Martin Luther King Jr. is arguably the most celebrated non-elected citizen in the history of the United States of America.

This is evidenced by the fact that Dr. King is the only American to have a federal holiday named in…

January 7, 2019—The fact is that, despite the warm metaphor we commonly use, a congregation is not a family. A congregation is a localized, institutionalized expression of a larger social system: the organized religious system.1 The relationship clergy have with…

January 9, 2019—Columbia Theological Seminary announces recipients of its 2019 Alumni Awards to be presented during their annual “Homecoming” alumni reunion event, February 4-6, 2019, on campus in Decatur, GA near Atlanta. Philip R. “Phil” Gehman (MDiv ’68) will…

A Spirituality Reading List by Fives

Israel Galindo, Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning and Director of Online Education

Someone recently asked me for a reading list of books on spirituality. I’ll start by confessing that coming up with this…

December 31, 2018—Effective congregational leaders know the difference between content and process—and they focus on process rather than content. Content has to do with what people say, while process has to do with how people function. Beliefs, doctrines, mission statements,…

December 24, 2018—John Calvin was the great Protestant reformer from France, who ultimately pastored the church in Geneva. During his Christian journey and ministry as a reformed pastor, he wrote and frequently revised the classical work of theology, Institutes of…

When I first started writing fiction, I had a great idea for a story, and it felt like the whole story was alive in my imagination.

Each time I tried to write the story down on paper, though, the excitement…

December 17, 2018—One major trap for clergy leaders is the demand for them to take responsibility for things that rightly are not theirs. This is exacerbated by the propensity of pastors to accept that demand. After all, they are in…