The Presbyterian Outlook

News and Articles from the The Presbyterian Outlook

Top Search/Contact Area

Hubs on the community wheels

by

Every church, every neighborhood, every committee, every organization of which I have ever participated has had unheralded, unofficial leaders. I can picture them, name them, recount the ways they gathered, cared, expedited, advocated. Sometimes they used official channels and existing processes; other times they created a brand new means to get done whatever needed gotten done. Somehow the unofficial leaders knew things that those of us in official capacities did not. The family under financial stress. The conflict brewing over an issue or between neighbors. The impact of a far-off policy on a nearby community. They also knew who to call, who could talk to whom, when to speak and when to keep quiet, how to discern a tempest in a teapot from a gathering tsunami. How, I often wondered, do they know how to navigate waters I don’t even see until the currents are so strong they threaten to carry me away? In pondering that question, I have concluded that such leaders possess several … [Read more...]

Tagged With: leadership

Prayer

by

I remember my first fervent, desperate, I-will-do-anything-if-you-answer-this-prayer-God prayer. When I was 8 years old, my little brother’s life seemed to hang in the balance. I don’t know now if the situation truly matched my fear of it at the time. My brother, six years my junior, looked pale, limp and my medical-profession parents looked panicked. Nothing frightens a child like seeing their parents frightened and I had never before seen them so alarmed. My brother has a permanent tracheotomy and that night something went wrong. I remember the darkness. Frantic adult voices, a scramble to the car, a ride from our rural home to the rural hospital where my dad was normally on the inside of the doors through which patients were brought by family members looking for help. All the while I kept praying: Please God, oh, please God, make him be all right. Memory fades over time and details elude me about the sequence of events. The story ended happily with my brother back to his annoying … [Read more...]

Tagged With: prayer

#realfamilychristmas

by

Sappy sentiments about “home” pervade this season no less than cheesy Christmas music and relentless advertisements telling us to buy things. The classic “Home for Christmas” competes for airtime with Justin Bieber’s “Home This Christmas.” Don’t forget the movies from “Home Alone” to the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” where being embraced by family and friends, chestnuts roasting on the open fire, trees laden with gifts, everyone reunited, happy and, well, home, marks the Norman Rockwell image of Christmas. But I ask you, is this what your home is like? Moments of such greeting card bliss and annual holiday letter verbiage exist, but only in fleeting glimpses. That selfie is taken just before the smoke alarm goes off and the turkey gets hurriedly pulled from the flames. The social media post crops out the loved one who’s had too much punch and subsequently not enough filter. Rarely do we hear about the strained dinner conversation about politics, or the new girlfriend no one likes, … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Christmas

The blessing of books

by

I love the used book sales that local libraries hold in basements and back rooms. The smell of musty pages, the multicolored stacks of spines and lettering, the antiquated titles, the photographs within that reveal fashions that should never come back in style (but, of course, will). Every volume both time bound and timeless. Fixed when printed, yet changing with each person who peruses them. Children’s books. Cookbooks. Classic novels and esoteric poetry. Hunting and pecking through boxes, knowing that something wonderful might be unearthed, I feel like a treasure hunter on a quest not for gold, but for ideas. I once found Dag Hammarskjöld’s “Markings” and was drawn to its simple cover. At the time, I’d no idea who he was but a quick skim revealed it well worth the two-dollar price tag. The small Bible concordance I use regularly came to me from the expansive religious section in the Columbia, South Carolina, regional library sale. Between the “Christian romance” titles and the … [Read more...]

Cause or community?

by

“People connect around a cause and they get tired. We need community while we work on cause.” That’s what my friend, Kermit Moss, pastor of Manhattan Bible Church in New York and interim director of black church studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, shared with a group of Presbyterian pastors gathered around tables in a hotel conference room. While Kermit’s presentation contained many worthy insights, this one stuck with me. Perhaps because I am in a season overflowing with causes – important, good causes – and find myself sometimes tired, bordering on bereft. Just last night, as I write this, Richard Spencer and his white supremacist, torch-wielding, golf-shirt-and-khaki-pants-wearing supporters, returned to Charlottesville, Virginia, to pay homage to Robert E. Lee and the Lost Cause his statue represents. Spencer noted in a tweet that “Charlottesville 3.0 was a success.” He says they will come back. I have been reading articles about the civil rights work of Oliver White … [Read more...]

Tagged With: civil rights

Baptismal calling

by

For years Frederick Buechner’s quote about vocation both haunted and inspired me. You likely have heard it: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I tried to live up to that lofty vision. I queried young adults about their “sense of call.” I agonized with them as they sought God’s plan for their lives. I put a whole shopping cart full of stock in the importance of choosing the right vocation and I resold those goods to others. I now think I laid a heavy burden on those I encouraged to discern the intersection of their deep joy and the world’s deep need. I now recognize how rarely people have the luxury of such high-minded searching. More often than not, our deep need is to pay the rent and the means to meet that need is anything but gladness inducing. I know too many young adults who are too doubled over with the stress of student debt to wax eloquently about how if they do what they love, the money will follow. I know … [Read more...]

CONTACT US: