Our by-laws say that we should have a spring business meeting. Why we need to have a spring business meeting is beyond me, but apparently it made sense to folks back when the by-laws were written. Spring business meetings had apparently been deprecated long before I became pastor of Central (certain parts of our by-laws…
Category: Pastoring
Ordinary Meetings
I’ve never been a “good counselor.” The desire to advocate is really strong in my psyche, and it kinda gets in the way. Though, one of the couples I married did recently tell me that our pre-marital sessions were helpful so that’s nice (but rare). I think that one of the big reasons I don’t…
Reading the Gospels
As some folks already know, I’m planning a fall sermon series examining the political implications of Jesus’ preaching as the would have been experienced in the first century. With the backdrop of the presidential election, it seems like a good time to cover material I’ve hit tangentially in the past. Basically, I’m led to preach…
On the eve of travelling
My conference trip “unofficially” began this afternoon when my wife and kids dropped me off at my friend Frank’s house so I could stay her over-night (Frank offered because he knows that getting up at 4 AM and having your wife drive both you and your two school-age Children to either the airport or a…
Genuinely Pleased
It’s rare that I finish a sermon a feel that I actually said what I meant to say. Preachers are their own worst critics, and the vacuous pleasantry “nice sermon, Pastor” doesn’t really give all that much feedback for me to work with. The general lack of emotion on the part of a good number…
Different strokes for different folks
I’ve never been part of a congregation that had a functioning prayer chain. Usually this was because the “phone tree” was hopelessly out of date, and even the numbers that were correct tended to direct prayer requests to /dev/null. In all these congregations the proposed “solution” to the problem of the non-functioning prayer chain was…
