Last April, I found myself sobbing unexpectedly and uncontrollably while sitting in a barbershop for a haircut. It was the first time I’d really wept since my father passed away a month earlier.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with grief.

Six years before, I left vocational church ministry. I resigned from a church I’d helped plant 15 years earlier, a church I thought I’d retire from. But conflict and unhealthy leadership had wreaked havoc on my soul, and it was time to ...

Attend church on Mother’s Day and you’ll hear how great mom is. Attend on Father’s Day and—if you hear anything about fathers at all—you’ll hear how today’s fathers need to step up and provide.

I suspect that the attitude we take toward these two holidays reveals something deeper: Christians praise Mom for serving well but criticize Dad because he’s not leading well. But I’ve begun to wonder if our inflexible parental gender roles come more from ...