Love is central in all thriving churches

Last week while I was in Charleston, South Carolina, for a few days I was rather amazed and mesmerized at the number of very old churches in Charleston, some of them a few hundred years old and still going.  That got me thinking about what is the element that makes a church a place people want to attend and really get involved.  I realized the one factor that thriving churches share is love.  And, well, here’s my religion column about that.  It ran in today’s Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette.