Here is the Steeple
Preached July 22 at the Congregational Church in Iowa City. Again, no final sermon text. Speaking somewhat extemporaneously seems to be working, I finally felt comfortable and in my groove again for the first time since, really, Beverly. But this week's sermon had to do with the temple of Solomon, and the disconnect between the […]
Hope for the future
Working on my sermon for tomorrow's services at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, I wonder how folks who consistently preach without notes deal with the waiting period between sermon prep and sermon delivery. When I was writing manuscripts, I would stop when I hit the right note and then do another two rounds of […]
On the end of a ministry
This time last year, I was anxiously awaiting the final say on whether I'd be hired as a campus minister (I wasn't really sure until late July, and even then there was some ambiguity as to the length of my service). Anxious partly because this seemed like the only ministry work that I seemed likely […]
Memorial Day
Remember the dead. But remember them in life. It is easy to sum up a man's life by his method of death, but each soldier who died had a life in the service and prior to the service. And it is the absence of those lives that tears at the fabric of our own lives […]
Missions
[written while on mission, edited afterward. This was originally the second of two postings] Thursday night, on the eve of our departure from our mission site. I am feeling even more ersatz Baptist than usual, as our Cooperative Baptist Fellowship mission group now consists of two ELCA Lutherans and a UCC minister playing a Baptist […]