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#DoSomething

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As much as anyone can miss eight solid days of meetings, I’m going to miss General Assembly this year. General Assembly is an odd thing – some might even say an anachronism – but it reminds me that it’s good to be Presbyterian. In a world full of chaos, suffering and injustice, it might seem odd to spend so much time and money on gathering people from all around the country (and world) just to talk. It makes me think of the modern bystander effect where everyone tweets but no one actually helps. It makes me think of the Hunger Games and the people of the “Capitol” who sent thoughts and prayers and care packages to comfort Tributes as they were forced to fight to the death in an arena. Are we rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? Are we having enlightened discussions while people suffer outside? If I’m honest with myself, I think that, in a certain sense, we are. I’m not here to condemn our meetings — at General Assembly or otherwise. I think we Presbyterians like having … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223

The game of life: What I learned about ministry and myself from board games

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As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve continued to carry my love of games from my earliest childhood. There’s something about play that is life-giving to me. And games – especially board games – have been one of my most important avenues into play. Growing up, our family had a closet full of games. It was the narrow hallway closet, so opening the door to pick out a game effectively prevented travel between the bedrooms and the rest of the house. It was an important event. We played a variety of games, including standards such as Sorry, Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Battleship and, of course, Monopoly. One of our absolute favorites was the Game of Life. We played it so often that our babysitter refused to play it with us, so we came up with a workaround: We asked her if we could play a game called “File,” and then got out Life and told her we switched the letters around. Very clever. Surprisingly, it didn’t work well. The Game of Life is essentially a drawn-out metaphor for, … [Read more...]

The storyteller

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When I first began preaching, I was terrified of leading the children’s moment. I couldn’t stop thinking of Jesus’ words: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). It just so happens that drowning is very near the top of my list of “worst ways to die,” so I didn’t want to find out what might be worse than that. I remember one Sunday in particular when only one little girl showed up to church. The lesson that week was about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and receiving manna from God. They got the same amount of manna for five days, but on the sixth day they received twice as much so that they could observe the Sabbath (Exodus 16). I had planned to retell the story during the children’s moment before the sermon and let the kids participate in the retelling. There were tables up in the … [Read more...]

Tagged With: youth ministry

The baptismal community

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The other day a friend mentioned to me that her family, including a newborn granddaughter, might be looking for a church. That’s not how it came up, though — first she mentioned that the family was thinking about getting the granddaughter baptized. I’m always glad to hear about people wanting to raise their children in the church because I think it’s a great environment: The church teaches kids how to interact with other kids and adults, how to sit still for long periods of time, how to sing and read music and, of course, it teaches them about God. The comment about getting the granddaughter baptized wasn’t idle, though. The question that followed was, “Would you baptize her?” Weddings, baptisms and funerals are major conduits for interaction for many pastors, and I count myself among them. (Unfortunately, I get to know more people through funerals than weddings or baptisms, but that’s the way things go these days.) But, for a variety of reasons, many other pastors won’t perform … [Read more...]

Tagged With: baptism • sacraments

Meeting the Spirit while writing a sermon

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Sermon-writing day is rough. It’s painful, boring, heart-wrenching, soul-draining, and it makes me whine a lot. Most weeks, I’ll come home one day and be moody, agitated and despondent, because that’s what sermon-writing day does to me. I try to look forward to it. I’ll get a big glass of iced tea (or a mug of hot tea, depending on the season), turn on my favorite music, and get comfortable for what I know will be long hours of sitting at the desk. I try to pick a day relatively free of distractions, when I’ve gotten the week’s biggest tasks out of the way, so that I can have a clear mind and a clear schedule. And sometimes, if things go just right, the sermon will essentially write itself. I’ll sit down, start typing and 15 minutes later a complete outline has appeared. Most weeks it doesn’t go like that. Most weeks I sit down at that computer staring at the blank screen and the void starts staring back. I’ll go back and forth between the Bible and a commentary and journal … [Read more...]

Tagged With: preaching

Becoming more human

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I learned about a new website recently. The site willrobotstakemyjob.com determined, well, how likely it is that a robot will take your job. It picked up a lot of attention, and lots of people typed their career into the search engine to see if they were about to be replaced. Cashiers have a 97 percent chance of being replaced; pastors, on the other hand, have a 0 percent chance. Despite the fact that Christianity won’t be replaced by Robotology any time soon, I’m still concerned about the changes technology is causing in the employment landscape of the U.S. Where will this spread of automation take us? It’s an old question, I know. The printing press perhaps most closely mirrored the dawn of the information age, and I’m sure it put countless scribes and copyists out of work. It did, however, bring incredible increases in wealth and prosperity (as measured by increases in city size). And though there are calligraphers and others who make their living by writing things out by hand, … [Read more...]

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