What ambiguous losses are you facing right now? I want to speak openly and share a few ambiguous losses that I’m feeling. That is just what I’m asking you to do in this episode of Three Minute Ministry Mentor (3MMM).…
Read More
3MMM | Episode 84: Why Music Matters
In our last Episode 83, Pete and I talked about why ministers need to study culture. He gave us two reasons: People come to seminary shaped and formed by culture innately — largely unawares. Reflexivity is that significance of learning…
Read More
3MMM | Episode 83: Why Culture Matters
The first time I met Pete Ward in person we had a theological argument. We also had drinks and some laughs in a mutual friend’s living room. As I recall, Mary McClintock Fulkerson and I might have teamed up against…
Read MoreAdvent I – APT Presentation – Eileen Campbell-Reed
Emerging Employment Spaces: Alternative Pathways If you are thinking about a career in theological education, you will be taking a hard look at the current employment situation. This slide show and voiceover offers my analysis on the present crisis, and offers…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XV
A Turn to Lived Experience
The study, practice, and knowledge of big ideas in psychology and religion are shifting and changing in the twenty-first century. One of the most substantial changes is that deep thinking about big ideas demands an engagement with the lived experience of real people and situations.
Ordinary Time XVII
Everyday Practical Theologians When I started this series, I didn’t know I was starting a series. I was responding to a request for advice to young women leaning into a call to ministry. The request was specifically for ‘practical advice.’…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXIV
Tuesday. Two stories on NPR this morning gave me pause: Graphene and At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Rolling around in my head was an essay I had read on Monday evening, which raised the question of whether practical theology might best be thought of as art or science. In The Challenge of Practical Theology, Stephen Pattison argues that “sciencism” has run rough shod over, well, nearly everything. We are so enamoured by science, he says, that we measure most everything else against it.
Read MoreEaster III
One of the best gifts we can give to people is to ask them “How did God’s presence get you through that tough spot in your life?” This was the advice of sociologist and self-described “immigrant in practical theology” Nancy Ammerman. Nancy gave the opening key note address at the Association for Practical Theology last Friday evening.
Read More