Ask a group of Sunday School teachers why they first began teaching, and you are likely to get a variety of responses. “My child’s class needed a teacher.” “The Christian Education Director talked me into it.” “I enjoy working with children/youth/adults.” “I don’t remember.”

A prayer for Lent.

Writing a review of the Justice Praise website which features the music of Phil Carver has been on my to-do list since The Daily Voice began. In part, I have put it off because I couldn’t decide how to begin!

Over the years I have tried a lot of Bible study methods with youth. Few have worked for me as well as one I literally created in desperation one night, a process I now call the "Huh? / Yeah! Bible Study." Here it is...

Tuesday, March 31 will mark the 100th edition of The Daily Voice. So, we thought it was a perfect time to celebrate...and offer you a chance to win! We've got 3 signed books by one of Tim's favorite authors, Bill McKibben, to give away. (Winners can choose one book from those available.) To enter, just do one or both of the following:

1. Pay for your membership to Different Voice (remember, we have a "set your own membership" fee.) When you do, we'll also send you access to a hidden page on our site where we occasionally post freebies like ebooks, software, and other goodies.

2. Create an account on DifferentVoice.com. (If you have already created an account, you can enter by just sending us an email.) Doing so is free, and enables you to post comments and upload curriculum to the site.

Rules: Enter by paying for your membership to Different Voice or by registering a free account at differentvoice.com. Contest deadline is 5 PM CST, 3/31/09. One entry person. 3 winners will be randomly selected from those who enter. The first person chosen will be given their choice of three books; the second person chosen will be given their choice of two books; the third person chosen will receive the final book. Open to residents of the U.S., except where prohibited by law.

Google is the most popular search engine, followed by Yahoo and MSN, and usually these are just fine for general searching. But sometimes, though, your search needs may be more unique, or you yearn for something other than pages of text to wade through. Here are some of the many other great options which might come in handy from time to time.

 In an age when nearly everyone has access to the web, thereby having access to huge amounts of content related to the Bible, faith, Christianity, doctrine, progressive theology, and much more, what place do Christian education classes (e.g. Sunday school)--especially for adults--still have?

Not all that long ago, pastors and Sunday school teachers were the repositories of religious knowledge. In reality, they often simply just had the study guide! But still, there was an expectation that the teacher would generally have more information at their fingertips that they would impart to the students. At least two developments radically changed that.

One week ago today, my family gathered in Wisconsin to celebrate the life of my grandmother, who died recently at the age of 93. She was a wonderful woman who leaves behind a legacy of love. Each of us wore one of her butterfly pins on our clothing, and she had many of them. As the pastor remarked at her funeral, in her apartment you could close your eyes, spin around, and wherever you looked next it was very likely you'd see a butterfly. In symbolic form, resurrection was all around us.

We of course are in the liturgical season of Lent right now, but the pastor is indeed right. Resurrection is all around us...

Every so often, a book comes into my life and acts like the hand that shakes a snow globe, disturbing all of the molecules of my existence and rearranging my internal landscape. My college textbook for my Intro to New Testament class, Henri Nouwen's Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, Parker Palmer's To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey, and a handful of others have gone beyond being engaging or thought-provoking to being truly transformational forces in my life. To that short list, I'll add a new one: Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus by Robin R. Meyers. It's a book that really needs to come with a warning label on it, like, "This book will either change your life, your ministry, your faith, your friendships, and just about everything else...or, you'll be too afraid to let it do so!"

You just never know when an opportunity for ministry will present itself. A couple of months ago, I read that in low-income neighborhoods, the ratio of books per child is one age-appropriate book for every 300 children. (More reading statistics are available in a report from the National Endowment for the Arts.) As a book-lover, I was appalled by this statement and commented as such to a friend. The next thing I knew, we were in the midst of planning a way to address this issue in our little corner of the world.