Category: Congregation
My First Sermon: When Miracles Happen to Good People
What is a “miracle” really? Colloquially speaking we tend to associate the word “miracle” with a specific event that is not explainable in natural terms, and the outcome of that event seems to... Read More
Miscarriage and Support
Dealing with death and grief is part of becoming a cleric. But dealing with miscarriages and the accompanying grief is too little discussed in many religious circles. Fortunately, that's beginning to ... Read More
Normative Inculturation? A Thirteenth–Century Example of the Middle Ground in Relations between the Latin Church and the Church of the East
This paper looks at two thirteenth century accounts, the Itinerarium by the Franciscan William of Rubruck and the Syriac Church of the East text Tashīthā DemārYaballāhā (the History of Mar Yaball... Read More
On Empowering Women through Art in South Sudan
“With art there is no barrier.” These words concluded a brief interview I had with Milcah Lalam, a woman from South Sudan who provides psychosocial rehabilitation for communities within this newly... Read More
The World Is Their Parish: Can The United Methodist Church Survive?
This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post Religion. In a post this week, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources of the General Board of Discipleship — a national organiz... Read More
Why I Love Church – A Humanist Confession and Battlecry
When I read The Humanist Manifesto for the first time while sitting in my Cambridge University dorm room, I knew that this was who I was – someone committed to a naturalistic perspective, with a cle... Read More
Congregations and the Curation Nation
What would happen in clergy became, again, curators? Not so much the leaders of the congregation, but theological hosts to the banquet of resources that would enable congregations to live abundant liv... Read More
Making Sense of “God’s Love”
Summer 2010. I am in Indonesia. None of my doctors are on the same page, but they all agree that something is wrong. One Saturday my shoulder freezes at the joint and I can’t lift it more than four ... Read More