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...]

Wear your vestments. Clergy will sit together at the front. Faith leaders are needed in the park. We want the clergy to take the lead and set the tone.  These are some of the sentiments I heard this summer that will stick with me for years to come. Despite the shrinking numbers on our rolls and the much bemoaned decline of religious institutions, this summer, when the heat of hate got turned up to high, faith leaders were looked to for guidance, for comfort, for courage, for hope. We aren’t as irrelevant as we thought we were. When churches offered worship services, people came. They packed the place every time. Some looking uncomfortable and unsure, but nonetheless present. My husband overheard the man in front of him say to his pre-teen son, “You haven’t been to church since you were two.” But they were there on a Saturday night as the gospel was preached and prayers were lifted and Jewish and Christian songs were sung. When churches opened their doors, they came. They … [Read more...]

AIDS, homelessness, wars fought at a distance and quickly, famine in far-off countries, marriages, deaths, cocaine addiction and alcoholism, divorce, youth struggling with coming of age, sickness. These were the issues that I thought would make up my ministry when I was in seminary in the early 1990s. The first funeral I conducted while I was still a student was for a woman who’d died of AIDS. I’d worked with “at risk” youth in public housing as a volunteer and then on staff at a Boys and Girls Club. Peers in college had dabbled in drugs like marijuana and cocaine; one was in AA by her junior year. My classmates and I watched Operation Desert Storm unfold like a video game on CNN, and not two months later decisive victory and a cease-fire was declared. Perhaps all that angst wasn’t warranted after all. Wars like Vietnam and World War II were a thing of the past given this new technological age. This assumption, like so many others, has proven to be wrong. The AIDS epidemic is not … [Read more...]

Fewer and fewer people I encounter have any idea what “Presbyterian” means. When, upon meeting someone, I am asked, “What do you do?” I usually say, “I am a Presbyterian pastor.” If they ask follow-up questions I go into more detail with words like “editor” or “religious magazine.” Most of the time all the person hears is “pastor” and then attaches to that whatever baggage they associate with the term. I confess – and this is a confession of sin – that I use the qualifier “Presbyterian” because, at least to me, it puts me in a category separate from television evangelists or fundamental literalists. To me, “Presbyterian” means educated, thoughtful and – yes, let me just speak it plain – intellectual and unlikely to hold up signs with “John 3:16” at the ballpark. (I told you this was a confession of sin.) I have come to understand, however, that “Presbyterian” does not carry those connotations for many anymore. I might as well skip the “Presbyterian” part and just say, “I am a … [Read more...]