Whatever ministry we are considering, it is profoundly important that we ask the children. And after we ask them, it is even more important to listen. This week I have been with a cohort of nine churches. We are considering…
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3MMM | Episode 202: Erin’s Favorite Things
We are offering a summer series of “My Favorite Things” this year, and 3MMM Team Member Erin Robinson Hall shares some of her favorites. Things that are making her and her family happy this summer. You can also find more…
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3MMM | Episode 191: Talking Through Tragedy
Talking through tragedy, creating sanctuary in a crisis, and accompanying people through ambiguous loss amounts to some of our hardest relational work in the practice of ministry. In this week’s episode I want to talk about all three forms of…
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3MMM | Episode 187: Mental Wellbeing
We need to talk about the mental wellbeing of our children and teens. These years of forming identity, re-modeling the brain, and flying further from the nest are already a big challenge. Add three calendar years of isolation, disrupted schedules…
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Guest Post | The Beauty of Motherhood by Kimberly Knowle-Zeller
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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3MMM | Episode 173: Listening to Children
One of our most important tasks coming out of the last 30 months is to be listening to children. In the recently released #PandemicPastoring Report, I wrote, “teenagers, children and adults everywhere suffered social isolation and profound stress.” The multiple…
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A Mother’s Day Prayer
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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Resources for Pandemic Pastoring
Are you a minister or chaplain, an activist or congregational pastor? Whatever your role in ministry, you are now living and working in an unprecedented worldwide season of the coronavirus pandemic. And we want to support you as you bring…
Read MoreOrdinary Time V – Prayers for Ferguson
Prayers for #Ferguson – Tuesday Yesterday I posted a sweet message about my child’s back-to-school day. Today I’m posting a prayer for the children of #Ferguson who were scheduled to begin classes today, August 19, 2014. Schools will remain closed this…
Read MoreEpiphany IX
Psalm 139 on a Wednesday night When I speak to children I speak in a voice that gathers them in Even while they tumble across the carpet Like puppies with clothes They whine and yip and yelp occasionally But when…
Read MoreAdvent V
Tomorrow is the Sunday of Advent in which we invite and celebrate joy and a good Sunday for a baptism. I will attend a baptism for a baby I know tomorrow. He and eight other little ones will be blessed and welcomed into the church. I assisted at the wedding of his parents a couple of years ago. It will be a joyful time for many reasons. Yet, it is not a joyful time for all children.
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From the Back Seat
Recently we were out riding on a Saturday afternoon. We had two three-year-old girls strapped securely in the back seat. We stopped at a neighbor’s farm and got a good look at some chickens.
We asked the first little girl, “Do you know what chickens give us?”
“Honey.”
Lent I
Lent should not ever really begin the way it did. But then tragedy does not seem to have a timetable. At least not one I like. My feelings are still too raw to blog about this now. And some of you who read this are raw as well. So I’ll stick with one of the prayers I prayed in the funeral today. It’s a prayer for children, and it followed a reading of Luke 18:15-17. Jesus Christ, we love our children. You love our children. You love us as your children. And so we bring you our children now . . .
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