“Is this an uncomfortable place for you to be?” a sister asked her brother. It seemed like a strange question to ask given the setting. The wedding guests were joyously dancing on the dance floor. The cousins had just sung a duet, an old spiritual. The children were savoring a slice of Read More...

When the church staff convenes each Tuesday we engage in a discussion about a topic prompted by an article we’ve all read in advance.  Because we bring a variety of gifts ministry, the topics are wide ranging:  from music to technology, from theology to business management.  We muse about how God’s Spirit Read More...

I wonder if Mary and Joseph told anyone that their 12 year old, Jesus, had disappeared for three days while the family was attending a festival. Or if the father of the prodigal son shared with his rotary club friends that his son was out squandering his inheritance at the casinos in Read More...

College students singing classic spirituals, concert pianists performing Bach and toddlers dancing to the sounds of a flute. These were our visions when we crafted the October concert series at the church. It would be a way to celebrate the classical music that graces our weekly 11:00 a.m. worship as well as Read More...

For the last eight months, the church leadership has been listening to its members through a series of events: Centennial Conversations, First Impression Gatherings and a Feasibility Study. (See related article on results of that study on page 2.) But what I want to muse about is the theological or spiritual enterprise Read More...

Seated in their “regular pew,” this couple had sandwiched in between them a woman whose face I did not recognize. After the service, we shook hands in the narthex and they introduced me to their good friend. As we exchanged pleasantries I could feel something “more” was unfolding but wasn’t sure what. Read More...

On the evening of Sept. 10 I shared the Annual Report of the church at a lovely dinner gathering of church leaders. If you would like a peek, you can find it here. I’m tickled that we produce an annual report because it’s good to pause and look back and see how Read More...

  Why Preach, Why Listen is the title of a book I read many years ago. But the title still haunts me. Why do I preach and why do you listen? It isn’t to be “preachy,” which has become a negative word that conjures up a haranguing of sorts, where a speaker Read More...

It’s as much art and luck as it is science and skill. I’ve spent 26 years both teaching it in my professional role and practicing at it in my private life and it still confounds me at times. When it works well, it feels like a holy miracle. And when it doesn’t Read More...

What if the land could talk? What if you could stand at the corner of 61st and Ward Parkway and listen to the stories that the earth witnessed? The soil could speak to us about the blood shed upon it during the Civil War. During Battle of Westport, the Confederate soldiers retreated Read More...

I had never really thought about it this way. I knew the stories but had not put them together in a pattern. But recently I read that repeatedly in the story of Jesus, the people who are closest to him erect barriers around him to keep others out. They push the children Read More...

“Who loves you Judah?” the father asked his 20 month old son as he tucked him into his crib. “G-ma, Poppy, Granny... and Ella,” Judah exclaimed with glee as he remembered the face of his six- year-old cousin Ella, whom he had met only four hours earlier that day at the family Read More...