MaryAnn McKibben Dana
The Vietnam Memorial: A parable for leadership
The other day I heard Maya Lin talk about her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washin...
Pastors: Help your successor succeed
I was planning to write about my predecessor in ministry, and then I read Jan Edmiston’s post, ...
"No" has consequences
It’s been a wonderful summer—our family’s trip to Iona, Scotland was over-the-moon wonderful—but it’s good to be back into a routine. I put my lastborn child on the school bus this week....
"Follow your bliss" and other myths about call
These days I know a startling number of pastors and seminary graduates who cannot find jobs in the church....
I'm not married to my church, are you?
I was with a group of folk from another congregation recently, introducing them to NEXT Church and talking about my involvement as co-chair....
When bad theology happens to good people
This is almost unfathomable.
I lived in Tornado Alley during my teenage years, but they were quiet years for tornadoes. Honestly, I never took them seriously. Teenagers are invincible, after all. Whenever the subject came up we’d make jokes about trailer parks. It was classist privilege—I know that now, wrapped in a candy coating of “it couldn’t happen to me.”
It could.
Who was Jackie Robinson's Jackie Robinson?
My husband and I went to see 42 the other night. Good film, well worth seeing. There was the tiniest layer of cheese over the movie, and the score was not the least bit subtle. But it was well done, and it captured the essence of his story, at least according to Robinson’s widow.
A church member had told me to be on the lookout for references to faith, and they were certainly there.
How men can help women lean in
I wrote a post last week about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In and said in part:
There is still a tremendous gender gap in ministry. By and large, women are the associate pastors and solo pastors. Men are the tall-steeple preachers. (Men of my generation are very sad about this, and they lament it—sincerely, I believe—but will gladly move into those prestigious and well-paying positions even as they tilt their heads sympathetically and decry the patriarchy.)
Newtown, Noah Pozner and a world reborn
Some of my Facebook friends have been posting beautiful, excruciating articles about the loss of Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of Newtown. He was a twin. He was a darling child. And his family has been thoughtful, yet unflinching, in their mourning of him.
You can read the articles here and here—please be warned that they are wrenching. You may forget to breathe.
Clergy burnout, clergy health
A couple of articles are making the rounds among my friends right now. The first is this Century article by Craig Barnes (the new president of Princeton Seminary), who provides his reflections on why pastors cannot (or should not) be friends with parishioners. Of course there can be close and intimate relationships, and pastor and flock are friendly to one another. But Barnes argues that the clergy role is such that true mutual friendship is impossible, or at least inadvisable.
The second article is about a pastor of a large church in Charlotte who’s on a leave of absence at a treatment center after struggling with depression and alcohol abuse.
Deep acting at 35,000 feet, and in the grocery-store line
My friend Jan recently uninstalled the Disaster Alert app on her phone. Her hope was that the app would move her to pray and respond to natural and human-inflicted disasters as they happened. Instead, the app overwhelmed her and stressed her out.
Loving the stranger in an election season
The other morning during my run I listened to Krista Tippett’s 2010 interview with Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.
My kid won't swim the Olympics
Caroline competes each summer with our pool’s swim team, and last week their coaches had given them an assignment to watch some of the Olympic time trials held in Omaha....
Why we need to stop requiring churches to interview a woman
How do we solve the gender gap in ministry? With women outnumbering men in seminaries today, how we do break that stained glass ceiling?
Our current approach in the Presbyterian Church is to require churches, when looking for a pastor, to interview at least one female candidate. The thinking is, of the final three or four candidates, there would be a woman in the mix, and perhaps even churches with an unspoken default of pastor=male might be sufficiently moved to think outside the box. Not that every church will follow that up with a call to that woman, of course. This is mysterious Holy Spirit stuff, not to mention that there are women pastors who aren’t all that. But churches should at least look.
Do you think this helps?
Needing a mentor, being a mentor
Over my 12+ years in ministry, lay and
ordained, I’ve had a number of nurturing and supportive mentors and
guides—spiritual directors, coaches and professors. Now I’m ready for someone to scare the bejesus out of me. Or scare the Jesus into me.
The internet kills community! Except when it doesn't.
Two articles crossed my screen recently about the Internet and its effect on community.