This year I want to think beyond “American Thanksgiving” and its usual traditions. I want to share with you my commitment to understanding, learning from, and supporting Indigenous Peoples. Many of them are seeking to care for and “reclaim stewardship…
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Welcome to Three Minute Ministry Mentor. We are delighted that you are here! Three Minute Ministry Mentor (3MMM) offers weekly resources for learning and deepening your practice of ministry. Our weekly episodes strive both to inform and inspire your learning…
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#PandemicPastoring Report (2022) Download + News | Learn about the Author | Watch the Webinar ++++++++++ Pre-order the #PandemicPastoring Study Guide The #PandemicPastoring STUDY GUIDE is available NOW! We are living in a new era of ministry. We need to…
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Welcome to the Pastoral Imagination book page. You can observe and imagine doing ministry. Yet until you enter it with your whole self, alongside people in everyday situations, you cannot know fully how a calling comes to life. ~Eileen Campbell-ReedPastoral…
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What is the Writing Table? In the early pandemic days, students, pastors, professors, and authors were feeling a lot of stress on our writing (here is how one of my favorite writers has navigated it). So to help combat the…
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This week as Ordinary Time is winding down, and we are honoring All the Saints, living and dead, we also want to make space for honoring vocational grief. If you missed our All Saints’ gathering last week, we invite you…
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So you’ve been hearing the phrase pastoral imagination? And you’re thinking hmmmm, that’s interesting. Sounds kind of fun. Maybe a little mysterious. I’d like to know more…. But what is it exactly? You have come to the right place. I…
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Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is by author Kimberly Knowle-Zeller, one of the co-authors of The Beauty of Motherhood (Morehouse Publishing, March 2023). We honor the gifts and graces of mothering, and the many ways mothering that happens in relationships and…
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Today, we welcome Sandhya Jha (they/them), to help us in calling on our ancestors. Sandyha is a community organizer, anti-oppression consultant, and ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). They helped First Christian Church of Oakland convert their…
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This week we are celebrating mentoring! And we are also going to celebrate the Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) of Central Seminary. I know we are still on the Lenten journey for two more weeks. And I am so grateful for…
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Today’s guest post, “Women Preparing the Way” invites us to be thinking of Advent. We welcome Rev. Joanna Harader, pastor of Peace Mennonite Church in Lawrence, KS. You can find more of her writing at SpaciousFaith.com and on Instagram @joannaharader.…
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Editor’s Note: Today we welcome Rev. Jake Hall as our guest! Jake lives in Macon, GA with his wife Erin and their children. He is the Director of Initiatives in Faith and Culture at Mercer University’s Eula Mae and John…
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Welcome to the #MeTooReckoning Workshop! Thank you for making the choice to educate yourself and your community about the #MeTooReckoning and taking this self-paced course. We know this workshop will be valuable to you! It is designed to be a…
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This is a mother’s day prayer. Yet it is not like the ones I grew up hearing. This prayer is more of a psalm and a lament. It lifts up to God the painful and unspeakable facets of mothering and…
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How I Gave Myself Permission to Listen to Podcasts I remember the day so well — siting on my couch in my old apartment on Woodmont Boulevard. Hardwood floors, windows open, coffee in hand, as I pressed play on the…
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Bridges I have an invitation for you. But first an image. You’ve heard of the Bridge on the River Kwai? A Bridge over Troubled Waters? How about the Bridge to Terabithia? War. Grief. Escape. The search for relief. A bridge…
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Friends, here is a blessing for you this Christmas Eve and Day. A Blessing for Christmas Eve Whatever your year has been, wherever it has taken you, Whatever difficult or easy pathway, And whatever winding or steep road, You are still…
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How will you survive the holidays this year? Listen up! The holidays are here, and children everywhere are thrilled. But many teenagers and adults are wondering, how will we survive the holidays? Great question. Even in a normal year, so…
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This month I am sharing Advent reflections and stories. They gather up moments that I love. And they bring to life blessing and promise, silence and singing, grief and vulnerability, and moments of joy and hope. I am also recording…
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This Advent weekend was full. What about yours? And my weekend felt more like other Advent weekends of BP (before pandemic). I love circling through the season of Advent. Because it is my favorite. Yet important differences mark this year…
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Sometimes life and loss and longing and love are more than our words can contain. Through these challenging days, only a prayer of silence is enough. Because the deep peace of silence is all that can hold life as it…
Read MoreEditor’s note: This week we welcome Rev. Sarah Jackson Shelton as our guest. Sarah helps us think about how to offer genuine appreciation for clergy. A retired Baptist preacher with 44 years of ordained ministry, she now serves as Pastor…
Read MoreIn early June three significant public figures in theological education died. Each one contributed through teaching and writing to the education of ministers and the doctoral training of seminary professors. They each held up distinct nodes in the ecology of…
Read MoreWhen we think it’s too late I was flipping through the Christian Century that came this week while I was in New York City for commencement. I couldn’t understand the Gothic church doorway, the rainbow light and the word…
Read MoreWelcome to the final episode of our series with Dr. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, and today we are talking about ways of blessing our callings. What a delight to continue our exploration of Bonnie’s new book Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies…
Read MoreToday I am remembering Kat Baker, my friend and fellow doctoral alum from Vanderbilt University. Her obituary reports that Dr. Katharine Haywood Baker, “passed away peacefully at her home on August 28, 2024, following a brief bout of pancreatic cancer.”…
Read MoreWe welcome Rev. Dr. Kris Bentley as our guest blogger this week to share what she learned writing her first book Bivocational Ministry: Field Notes for Congregations and Ministers. Kris teaches at Lexington Theological Seminary, directs research with bivocational ministers,…
Read MoreThis week we are exploring changed callings, times when our vocations have fractured or when new callings arrive in unexpected ways. I invite you to listen in to Part IV of my conversation with Dr. Bonnie Miller-McLemore. She reads from…
Read MoreWhat do you know firsthand about “conflicted callings”? Welcome to Part III of my conversation with Dr. Bonnie Miller-McLemore about her new book Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling. This week we are taking her third chapter about…
Read MoreIn this week’s episode of Three Minute Ministry Mentor we are talking about “blocked callings.” We are continuing our conversation with Bonnie Miller-McLemore. She is the author of the recent book Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling. I…
Read MoreFive Lenten Practices for Responding to this Moment Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. (Joel 2:1)* As Lent…
Read MoreFollow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling. Wow! What a provocative book title. In this episode we welcome Dr. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, author of this 2024 Oxford University Press book about vocation. She goes deep on the many complex ways…
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How do we cultivate a clear speaking and writing voice? How do we come into sounding like ourselves, speaking with honest and vulnerability on the page or in person? I want to offer four stepping stones to help you move…
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