Mike Slaughter

In the summer of 1972 I received my license to preach in the United Methodist Church. I am currently in my 50th year of active ministry. During those years I have experienced vital mission movements that Jesus followers have participated in, with committed leaders marching and fighting for civil rights and working together to alleviate

Advent is the ideal time for Jesus followers of all political persuasions and partisan alliances after this difficult election cycle and in the midst of the lingering pandemic to set aside our differences, coming together in unity to reflect the mind and heart of Christ. To experience the new this Advent season, to find our

The pandemic of 2020 has given the church pause to reimagine church in a time of radical cultural change. Church as we know it will never be the same. The time is calling followers of Jesus to redefine measurables and the experience of doing church. Here are seven practices that I believe will be essential

The pandemic of 2020 has awakened the world to a new reality. Life and church practice will never return to the way things used to be. The wave of global nationalism, rise in cultish conspiracy theories and emboldened white supremacist movements will call followers out of traditional weekend worship practices to become workers for kingdom

Yes, I was one of the many this year who voted early by absentee ballot. My wife Carolyn and I waited in a car line almost a mile long to make sure we could drop our ballots in an official ballot box. As a pastor for more than 48 years I have never endorsed a

When I was a young pastor, I used to bemoan how evangelical Christians, and I considered myself one, were portrayed in the press and popular culture. Evangelicals were described as morally rigid, stiff and unyielding, firmly placing people, events and cultural phenomena into right or wrong, black or white columns in our Christian ledgers. Dana

Many Christians today have confused the gospel of the kingdom with the politics of the nation-state and have embraced worldly political leaders as ultimate heralds of truth. One influential Christian voice, who until recently led the largest Christian university in the U.S., stated “there is nothing that the President could do that would cause him

In 2013, the controversial Black Lives Matter movement had its genesis as a hashtag after George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing 13-year-old Trayvon Martin the year before. The movement was further fueled in 2014, when two more stories of African-American men dying through police action made the national news—Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric

I have been contacting pastors from around the country who have returned to onsite worship. The percentage of post-COVID attendance is astoundingly the same. Uniformly the pastors report around 30% of post vs. pre-virus attendance with the noticeable absence of young families with children and those adults in the most at risk groups. The virus

It was Father’s Day 2007. I woke up in a NGO compound in Ed Daein, Darfur, that was surrounded by nine foot walls that were topped with embedded broken glass and barbed wire. My son, 25 years old at the time, lay in a cot covered with mosquito netting just a few feet away. In