Faces and names
So you’ve been talking with or saying hello to that person at church for months, or years, and you appreciate the relationship. There’s just one thing slightly uncomfortable about it. You have no clue what their name is, and now it’s to the point where it’s embarrassing to ask. I…
Saint Patrick
Yesterday was St. Patrick’s day. I forgot to wear green, but no one pinched me. Like St. Valentine’s Day, or Christmas and Saint Nicholas, the lives of these saints are something akin to the background radiation from the big bang – still there if you really look for it, but…
No future tense = a better future?
Today I am in the Bluffton/Pandora area for a CDC pastors meeting and some work with the Ministerial Committee. On the drive up here I listened to the TED Radio Hour episode “The Money Paradox.” One of the featured speakers, Keith Chen, talked about his research on the relationship between…
Knowing in Our Bones
Since being called to serve as a “Pastor of Christian Formation,” I often find myself thinking about the notion of formation. How are we formed? Who are we being formed to be? In what ways is our formation either conscious or unconscious, explicit or implicit? What does Christian formation look…
The other side
There is a nice coincidence between this week’s worship theme, Land, and where we are at in the adult Sunday school study of the Gospel of Mark. Next class we will pick up at Mark 4:35, when Jesus, having finished teaching in parables from the shores of the Sea of…