I pastor a church in the Baptist tradition. A key element of the Baptist tradition is it’s independence in the calling of the it’s pastors. The congregation, and the congregation alone has the power to call its pastor. This has both obvious benefits and downsides. If a congregation is reasonably healthy and self-aware of it’s…
Category: Pastoring
Pastoring the Misfits
I pastor a strange church. A few years ago I began to refer to it as The Land of Misfit Christians 1. It’s about as good a description as any. Central Baptist is filled with people who have odd senses of humor, a goofy relationship with formality, and an uneasy truce with social convention. We…
A Pastoral End to Vacation
Given that I’m a pastor, I think I’ll reserve my Sunday blog entries to talk about “all things pastor.” At least, as I see them. Today was an interesting Sunday in several ways. First, I was technically “on vacation.” This meant I got to sleep in a bit and not spend the early Sunday hours…
Some days…
There are days when I just don’t think I have any pastoral gifts at all and my calling is just a joke people are playing on me to which I haven’t figured out the punch line. Then there are days when I manage to do something useful by God’s grace. When I turn around and…
Dear Donald
I don’t typically write “open letters” to other Christians, but your recent blog post made me want to reach out to you. Your follow up post offers a lot of clarity to your first thoughts. I especially love your thoughts on the “not about you” section. This quote was amazing, But this is a much…
I am weary
To my fellow disciples of Jesus Christ. I am weary. I am weary of being viewed as “suspect” because of the translation of the Bible I read, my ignorance of the latest Christian music, or because I have a mistrust of large-event evangelism. I'm your brother in Christ, and we are called to proclaim the…
