by James E. Copple The human predicament continues to amaze me.  Predicament is defined as a difficult, trying, and often dangerous situation.  On Sunday, April 7, while sitting in the airport in Amsterdam, I read the New York Times  report on the tragic suicide death of Matthew Warren, the 27 year-old son of Pastor Rick [...]

There is a poverty in Swaziland that is difficult to describe and it is a poverty unlike I have seen anywhere else in Africa.  It is largely rural, pastoral and dots the countryside of a thousand hills.  Today, I was with The Luke Commission, a mobile hospital – some would call  it a clinic – [...]

Patricia Melnice of Tough Angels has spent the last three weeks with me in Kenya visiting sites related to the work of the Kenya Gender-Based Violence Partnership. This partnership  consists of SAI/Servant Forge, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Tough Angels, the Crossroads Church of the Nazarene in Arizona, and Nazarene Compassionate Ministries in Kenya.  [...]

Dedicated to the staff, partners, and beneficiaries of SAI/Servant Forge “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death – you are with me.”  That you are with me promise jumps off the page and seizes my heart and my head every time I read it.  In my 63 years, I have certainly [...]

by James E. Copple In the last election cycle, candidates and their campaigns spent approximately $8 billion to secure their offices. Most of that $8 billion came from citizens like you and me. During the last campaign, candidates, their surrogates, their parties, their PACs inundated us with funding requests to support their efforts to secure [...]

We will never change cultural norms around bias or prejudice until we change them in the faith communities that shape our values. This is particularly true when it comes to our views or attitudes about women. All the monotheistic religions have a horrible history when it comes to women. This is why in the 21st [...]

God, help me to see this child as you would see them, help me to hear them as you would hear them and God, help me to do what you would do.  Twenty-five years ago, that prayer took me into a place with a student that forever altered my life. The student was in crisis and now [...]

Leadership is about leaders who have the capacity to influence a group to support or achieve a common goal. There are bad leaders, good leaders, servant leaders, autocratic leaders, moral leaders, immoral leaders, and the list goes on.

The country became a part of my life when Kenya exploded into the headlines in 2007-2008…The post-election violence led to the death of 1,300 people…and a major disruption in the economic, social, and political conditions of the country.