Browse Blog Post
6/14/2010
167. Reflecting on God’s Call
Our theme for the Missouri Annual Conference a couple weeks ago was Growing Deeper: Deepening the Spiritual Life for Leadership in the Church. Because the call to ministry represents a spiritual milestone of extraordinary significance for pastors and provides one of the most unifying and motivating
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1/12/2010
153. Renewing Prayer
With the start of the New Year, I reestablished various personal, spiritual, family, and professional priorities and recorded them in my journal. Some are tangible measurable goals (survive paying college costs for my sons!), some refer to daily patterns (write and exercise about an hour a day whene
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12/23/2009
152. The One Who Made Us Came To Us
Incarnation sounds like such a difficult word--ecclesiastical and weighty, academic and esoteric. The word seems far removed from the festivities of Christmas, either in their more secular and commercial expressions or in the carols and pageants of the season. Incarnation derives from the Latin, mea
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12/14/2009
151. Only if…
At our Annual Conference session in June, Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II (Assistant to the Bishop for African-American Leadership Development) provoked us to think in fresh ways about our human tendency to grumble and avoid work rather than to take responsibility and fulfill tasks. He showed us the thick r
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11/17/2009
147. The Wall
This month, the world celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On Nov 9, 1989, the gates were opened and crowds of people from East and West Germany intermingled freely for the first time in decades. They began to pick apart the wall, stone by stone, to the utter astonish
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10/6/2009
142. Recharge
I’ve learned to identify the power-hungry among us. I don’t mean the ambitious political self-seekers or self-serving control freaks. I’m talking about those people who meander through coffee shops, restaurants, hotel lobbies, and airport waiting areas looking under tables and behi
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7/27/2009
136. Impulses to Wordless Prayer
I’m usually more of a night owl than an early riser. This summer, however, I’ve found myself awakening early on many mornings. I step onto the back deck to fill the birdfeeders while soft streams of light emerge against the shadows. I enjoy the fresh smells, the glancing sheen of nascent
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2/25/2009
117. Forty Days
A lot can change in forty days.
I listen intently to the news every day, mostly on the radio as I drive. It occurred to me how much can happen in just a few weeks. The world can turn upside down.
Last September, the economy was chugging along with its usual rises, falls, bumps, and cur
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2/9/2009
113. The Eyes Say It All
I heard my friend and colleague, Sally Dyck, preach an excellent sermon on Radical Hospitality which she began with the line, “It’s in the eyes. The eyes say it all.” She went on to tell about the way we look at people, and the messages we send by how we look at them. B
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12/15/2008
100. Praying at Christmas
Last week during a bishops’ learning event on a college campus I took an evening walk and slipped into the chapel. I felt wonderfully fortunate to discover an excellent a cappella choir rehearsing and so I settled into a pew at the back. Immersed in the music, I felt myself opening to a
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