By Amy Butler This excellent book tells the story of Little Bee, a 16-year-old Nigerian girl who, fleeing the violence in her home village, has stowed away on a British freighter to make her way to the United Kingdom. The…

By Amy Butler I’ve been sticking with the Gospel texts assigned by the lectionary for sermon-writing these first three weeks of Advent even though John the Baptist and I have a kind of rocky relationship history. I just have always…

By Amy Butler On Saturday evening after Thanksgiving, I stood at my stove. I’d decided to mix things up a bit — no leftovers that night — so the spicy dish I was cooking was, if I do say so…

By Amy Butler Desolation. Dry, unyielding, lifeless, dark. Wind whistles through what was abandoned, echoes of emptiness filling the silence. No water runs here, no urgent life pushing up through cracks in the pavement. Just dry, empty, dead landscape, scorched…

By Amy Butler It has been over a year and a half since I graduated with my (last ever, I swear) academic degree, and I personally feel that I’ve shown great restraint staying out of the classroom for this long….

By Amy Butler Regular contact and conversation with my congregation is an important part of the work of a pastor and definitely one my favorite parts of my job. These days that interaction happens most usually by e-mail or on…

By Amy Butler In the tradition of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, I would like here to officially announce the unveiling of my grand plan to overthrow current church-membership practices. You heard me right. It’s not that this thinking is…

  By Amy Butler Knowing the one-year anniversary of her mother’s sudden death had just passed, I asked a friend over coffee the other day to tell me how she was doing. We talked about the year gone by, about…

By Amy Butler Hands down my favorite question to ask people in casual conversation is: Why do you go to church? I often wonder what compels people — what compels me — to offer so much of my life to…