JULY 4 AND JUNE 14 OCCUR CLOSE to each other on the calendar, and their themes are similar. July 4 commemorates the..
FOR OVER A MONTH I HAVE BEEN SKIPPING out on Sunday morning worship. Yet, in the past weeks of absence from church..
I’VE DONE IT MYSELF — dragged the nine members of the confirmation class to a Saturday presbytery meeting so that 13-year olds..
MOST CONGREGATIONS I KNOW take a deep breath between Easter and Pentecost, and for good reason. Lent is intense with study and..
RECENTLY, I TRAVELED UP I-77 from Columbia to Charlotte to catch a plane bound for New Orleans. On this short car ride..
I’VE BEEN THINKING ... how a small Bible study group changed my life! I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley when a..
NO MATTER HOW MANY Presbyterian Holy Week worship services my husband dutifully attends, it isn’t Holy Week for him if he doesn’t..
ONE OF MY FAVORITE PIECES OF ART is a bronze sculpture in my office — the gift of a well-known sculptor in..
Stuck in the pages of my Bible — next to the flyleaf, crumpled amongst the Psalms, slipped in between maps of Paul’s..
TO BE HONEST, SOMETIMES WHEN I hear the word “sin” I flinch. You’d think I’d get used to it after nearly 45..
I DON’T WATCH ANY TELEVISION series on a regular basis, but if I’m home and otherwise unengaged on a night when Tom..
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I got a phone call from a woman who introduced herself as the curator of the art..
I LEARNED THE HARD WAY: If you don’t go after the weeds by early April, you will have literally millions of weeds..
IN AN EARLIER COLUMN (4/10/11) I pointed out our denomination’s shocking lack of available pastoral calls, in comparison to the large numbers of pastors seeking calls. The column’s conclusion was a series of encouragements for entrepreneurial strategies to address the call shortage.
I was fortunate to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Switzerland, visiting a dear friend who, sadly, has had her cancer return with a vengeance. A pastor in Zurich, Denise and I met years ago at a Reformed theology conference sponsored by the Office of Theology and Worship. Later her daughter became our exchange student here in the States, and a big sister to our only child. Our families have stayed close.
I live in Fort Mill, S.C. Fort Mill is home to the White Homestead, the final meeting place of Jefferson Davis’ Confederate cabinet.
Recently I attended the sixth grade Renaissance Fair at Springfield Middle School. It was quite the event with hundreds of eleven- and twelve-year-olds dressed in varying degrees of homemade costumes displaying varying degrees of mortification.
IT WILL GO DOWN IN MY MEMORY as one of the top ten all-time meaningful events in my ministry.
On a cold January Sunday morning in Austin, my wife and I woke up wanting bagels — warm and fresh from a local bagel shop near the University of Texas.
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