Last week, I had the privilege to join colleagues of the Clergy in Community Cohort through Wake Forest Divinity School. It was such a joy to see them in person (masked and safely-distanced), as we gathered on the labyrinth at Sardis on a sunny day. I left our gathering renewed, but also challenged. Because we work in the silos of our own faith communities, we don’t often have time to hear what other clergy and congregations are doing. But the Church has a capital C for a reason. I remain in awe......

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Wait For It When I was thirteen, the days seemed so much longer, and the school year seemed like a decade. I desperately wanted a five-o’clock shadow (still hasn’t happened, thankfully!), and to be a few inches taller. And I remember so many people, especially adults, saying, “Don’t worry, you won’t be thirteen forever!” I found a lot of solace in watching The Wonder Years, because Kevin Arnold seemed to be able to sum up my frustrations so well. The adults were right. In time, many of my concerns faded.  But that......

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Staying Connected: Part Two So…we’re 25 weeks into virtual worship and programming with Zoom as our primary platform. Here’s the first in a series of random thoughts about Zoom-a-zoom-zooming: The Theological Crux of Password Protection We seek to be a welcoming community. For in-person worship, or any activity, all persons are welcome, not only to be seated, but to partake in our table, and to be fully-vested participants. We wanted to model that hospitality virtually. When we began Zoom worship we didn’t use a password or enact a waiting room. And we......

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Staying Connected: Part One Our church is not averse to technology, but we’ve also never been forced to be reliant on technology. Our building is small enough that it doesn’t need a sound system, and our ministry model is not dependent on reach and frequency. In many ways, A/V equipment, streaming components, and extensive IT infrastructure seemed too excessive: investment in these things would divert dollars from tangible ministries and services.  And besides, the simplicity of our style always felt like a Sabbath from the complexity of the secular world. And then......

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Stop saying, “They didn’t teach me that in seminary.” Seminaries (and all institutions of learning) don’t exist to predict future events; they work to equip students for the challenges of an unpredictable future. No, as a student at Wake Forest Divinity School, I never had a class that covered the specifics of a pandemic that couldn’t have been imagined. They also never said anything about what to do when the baptismal breaks on Sunday morning, or how to liquidate the assets of an estate left by a congregant, or which rubber stopper......

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