by Mark Beckwith | Sep 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
I was in the midst of an intense reverie in my living room at home. I was sixteen years old, a junior in high school. The Tet offensive (February 1968) had just claimed the lives of hundreds of American troops in Vietnam. At the time I supported America’s war...
by Mark Beckwith | Sep 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
We are engaged in spiritual warfare. So claims the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a loosely organized network of extreme conservative Christian leaders and congregations, which has steadily and stealthily moved from the fringes of our culture into the mix of the...
by Mark Beckwith | Sep 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
“Take that necklace off. It’s un-American”, was the greeting a woman gave me while working as a door-to-door salesman in Indianapolis after my sophomore year in college. I knocked on thousands of doors that summer. I was always unannounced, and unexpected. Many...
by Mark Beckwith | Sep 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
“I had to hold on for dear life.” Most of us have said this at one time or another, accompanied with some degree of breathless panic or abject fear. Many of us can recall situations when we felt that if our grip wasn’t tight enough, we were certain we would fall...
by Mark Beckwith | Aug 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
It was perhaps my most embarrassing experience while serving as a bishop. We were in Canterbury, England in 2008, all 800 of us – bishops from across the world, plus spouses and staff, gathered for a three-week gathering called the Lambeth Conference. It was not...
by Mark Beckwith | Aug 6, 2024 | Uncategorized
“Expectations are resentments under construction,” wrote author Anne Lamott, a phrase which has been quoted many times and which aptly describes many moments in my life. In recent weeks I have brought my own expectations into various gatherings – some personal, some...
