A pastor’s place: All ministry is local
Ministry is incarnationally specific. Pastors are called to see their place and people with God's "lover's eye," and to love them for their particularity.
Prayer on the go: A busy pastors spirituality
I was taught that my labors as a minister don’t count for my own spiritual life. Realizing that this is untrue has brought me great relief and joy.
Truth is proportional: The limits of what we can know
Rousseau and Barth each imagined arriving in heaven with his books. But the response they anticipated could hardly have been more different.
Mixed motives: Why people join a church
Do people join a church because they share its members' beliefs? This has become the putative
ideal, the only pure motivation for church affiliation. But I have seldom heard it voiced at our new members' class.
Moving parts: Liturgical body language
Using my hands in worship—whether raising them high or making the sign of the cross—helps to blur the boundaries that slice across the body of Christ.
Course correction: A congregation faces the financial crisis
The events of the last two years have been humbling—even for New Yorkers, a breed not easily humbled. When I first moved to Manhattan, I was often startled when someone offered a complimentary comment about another person, saying that he or she was “really smart.” The pride that went before the particular New York fall was, more than any other human frailty, our peculiar brash pride in putative cleverness, savvy and smarts. Now there is no escaping the embarrassing fact that a lot of very smart people in New York never saw the present economic crisis coming, and that many of those smart people had been participating in the foolish decisions that contributed to it.
Choice terms: Fancy religious language
The word jargon suggests needlessly obscure words that insiders use to dazzle and confuse outsiders....
Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian
Evangelical Christianity is generally loquacious; Minnesota Swedes seldom are....