One of the hardest things about being a teacher of preachers is that I don’t serve a church. I sometimes feel like I exist in a performative contradiction. …

Rock-a-my soul in the bosom of Abraham,
Rock-a-my soul in the bosom of Abraham,
Rock-a-my soul in the bosom of Abraham,
Oh, rock-a-my soul.

You know …

A few years ago, I gave up on the idea of balance. Balance is a myth.¹ It is simply not possible to keep the important things in your life in perfect balance …

“Issues reach the pulpit before you do." This statement by my dear friend Rev. Michael Brown, senior Pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in NYC, first …

What does the cross mean to you? You kind of have to figure that out before you can make sense of or preach on Jesus’ statement, “Whoever does …

My first reaction to the Gospel lesson this week was a movie memory: a scene from Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal Lecter (the brilliant Anthony Hopkins) …

“Immediately, she stood up straight and began praising God.” I have a feeling that when this woman bent over for eighteen years was finally …

Family division. Sadly, it doesn’t take much these days to procure a pointed argument between those with whom we are supposed to be the closest. We …

We are not done yet.

We are moving my mom into a nursing home. We are getting closer, but the sorting and the sifting and the sadness persist.

And so, …

We moved my mom into a nursing home last week. If you are a regular reader of this column, you know that she has Parkinson’s. She also has been diagnosed …

I am writing this column from beautiful Bay View, Michigan, a Chautauqua on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, where I am the preacher/lecturer for the …

Martha, Martha, Martha.

If you grew up when I did, you got that reference. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia -- of Brady Bunch fame. The oldest sibling of three daughters. …

The story of the Good Samaritan is rather remarkable. It has worked its way into our culture that even the unchurched will summon its principles so as to …

The mission of the seventy is no mission I could ever imagine accepting. It sounds more like orders received from central command on the series “Mission …

When I started thinking about the DWP column for this week, my first response was, Sorry, Jesus. You are wrong. Sometimes we have to bury our dead and you …