Each and every day, pastors make myriad choices. We choose where we spend our time. We choose who to pay attention to in pastoral care, and who to avoid. We choose what to focus on in our preaching and teaching, and what not to talk...
My husband and I recently celebrated 30 years of marriage, and we marked this milestone with a trip to the Pacific Northwest. Part of our trip was spent exploring Olympic National Park. It’s one thing to see pictures; it’s quite another to be there in...
Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken is often mistitled, The Road Less Traveled - such is the power of its final claim, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” For many,...
In June of 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested in Winona, Mississippi, for using a restaurant restroom while Black. State troopers forced two Black prisoners, under threat, to beat her with a blackjack while she lay face down on a jail cell bed. A policeman...
The mounting daily fatigue so many of us live with is not merely a consequence of busyness or complex work-life balance, but the pervasive and unrelenting false promise that there is always one more way to perfectly optimize your life. The message is that if you...
An occupational hazard of vocational ministry is that everything - Scripture, worship, conversations … life - is seen and experienced with an eye to using it in a sermon, bible study, class … or blog post! Clergy and ministry leaders are often so focused on...
The Problem We Share There are a few things about human relationships that are absolutely unavoidable. We all change, and we will disappoint one another. We all have the capacity to act selfishly and get on someone’s nerves. And we all want to be seen, heard,...
As we head into summer, we’ve been thinking about how we can best serve you in this space. One thing we don’t want to do is assume we know what’s on your mind or what would be most helpful for us to write about in the...
Over the past few weeks, we have explored what it means to be relentlessly relational, not just as a tagline for our work, but as a lens for thinking about ministry more broadly. What does it actually look like to prioritize relationships in a culture...