Wow. This is a very well stated articulation of how being a pastor means you get held to higher standards. Especially a really “big” name in ministry. The last few paragraphs are incredibly powerful so stick with it! And honestly, after reading it, I feel like it’s probably OK that we get held to higher [...]
3 recent books, and all ministry related: Sensual Orthodoxy, Debbie Blue: I’m over halfway through this book of sermons and I’m thinking about rationing it because I love it so much. My colleague Bart calls her “the Sarah Vowell of preaching”. This woman can take a Bible passage and pick it apart and then put [...]
It all started when lambie went missing. Zora’s lambie is her “thing” (Lambie is a hybrid blankie/stuffed animal…basically, sort of the baby version of those animal skin rugs with a head, but this one being a small lamb.) She’s not completely obsessive about her “thing”–she has an alternative thing at my mom’s house, this one [...]
As Erik puts it, when i get an idea in my head about a project, I just have to get it done. I redid the master bath, which really had to be done since the paint was no where near bathroom-grade, and it was starting to peel. I went with brown colors (they look kind [...]
It’s almost ordinary time again, which means we are about done with that most extraordinary time of Advent/Christmas/Epiphany. I’m always amazed by the way sacred and secular mix, by the way ld traditions stay with us or change, and by how contagious the whole idea of Christmas is. Here are 30 amazing photos of these [...]
It’s so cold in the Midwest that the movie “A Christmas Story” is coming true.
The chair (rescued from the trash outside my grandparents’ building…Erik’s sure someone died in it) is done after a month at the upholsterer. After 4 years of carting those pipes from apartment to apartment, we had a wall to hang them on and my Dad did the honors. And if I just sit and look [...]
Check out the article about this current hot-shot mega-church pastor in the New York Times. Things I find intriguing: a pastor who is clearly unafraid to reach out to an alternative group OF COURSE a somewhat Calvinist group with Kuyperian-leanings about sphere sovereignty would attract the best tattoo artists in the city…what’s not to love [...]
OK, that’s it…I will clean my office when we have heat again, later this week. Because, honestly…
Ethical dilemma moment that I swear is real…I know this sounds too incredible to have happened. Yesterday, Erik and Zora and I were on our way to Hope CRC, in Oak Forest, IL , for me to guest preach. (Hope is where I did my internship, where I was ordained, and was my home congregation [...]