All the Assembly Kept Silence
Download a PDF of this sermon Amos 7:7-15 • Acts 15:6-12 In 2008, a fragment of a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ got clipped into the news cycle for some days. To the shock and awe of millions, that preacher, who was pastor...Beyond Good and Evil
Download a PDF of the sermon text Genesis 38: 6-26; Mark 13: 33-37 What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. –Friedrich Nietzsche The story of Tamar and Judah is by no means a...
Hospitality Toward the Clergy
The organizer of a congregation’s adult forum asked me to present a talk in a series on “hospitality.” I was asked to reflect from my pastoral experience on “hospitality toward the clergy.” Here was an unusual opportunity to bring attention to organizational and spiritual development at a critical inflection point in their story.
The Pastor Reflects
In the first ten days of my ministry here, two people died. Of course, I had no knowledge of either or of their families–I was completely new to the town. And completely new to pastoral ministry! Very quickly, I learned something about pastoring quite unusual and worthy of remark: it works!
What’s A Human For?
We are so divided, they say. Blue and red, conservative and liberal, urban and rural pulled under separate enclaves like twelve-year old boys and girls at the edges of a dance floor; opposing sides never speaking. Laid on this story of division, of course, are some heart-warming ones about this tow n that is managing a spirit of comity, or that organization hosting hard conversations. The big scheme the media have latched onto is that all are contributing to social disorder because we are all stuck in our own minds, in our own tribes, unwilling to listen or learn, or to see the other’s side.
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