This week I am focusing on rural ministry gifts and challenges related to time, place, and power. The reason for this focus is that I will meet with a group of pastors and congregational leaders later this week. In anticipation…
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Ordinary Time XXXIII
Rant on binge writing “I do not like it, Sam I am!” I’m with Dr. Seuss on this one. I do not like binge writing – that is excessive and obsessive writing for long stretches of time that robs one…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XI
Unpacking Tonight amid packing for a brief trip, I also want to do a little unpacking. Wednesday’s blog post was a list of advice. As I noted, I usually avoid that format. Proverbs and pithy advice have their place. For…
Read MoreEpiphany X
What is margin? Talk of money and our personal relationship to it are still taboo topics around most conversation tables in US American society. The prohibitions keep us from learning wise practices about handling our stuff and our money. This church year my husband Lynn is chairing the Stewardship Ministry in our congregation, and we are in the midst of several conversations about our money and our stuff. I want to spend the next three posts before Lent addressing three questions, which are at the heart of our conversations. There is lot more to say, but this will be a start in this forum. The questions are: What is margin? How much is enough? And how can we live generously? I’ll take them in this order.
Read MoreChristmas III
one tiny nest
perched high against a cold december sky
what comfort?
soaking up the gray morning
Christmas II
Pastors don’t pray much it seems. They are busy. But they are not filling their time with prayer, meditation or personal devotion. At least a study that came out this week says this is the case. Seems to me that more than families are likely hurting if pastoral leaders are spending so little time attending to their own spiritual lives. But lest I sound too judgmental, I remember well the struggle to care for my own spiritual well-being while also attending to the spiritual well-being of those I served in the years when I was full-time on a church staff. Even when I was doing what I knew to do to care for my own soul, it was not always the most effective or spiritually nourishing thing I could be doing.
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