By Amy Butler I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my flower boxes, and about being a pastor, and how the two have so much in common. It could be this musing is coming about because of post-traumatic stress following…

By Amy Butler It’s several days after Easter, but I still can feel the wake of Holy Week rocking my life. As the storm gradually subsides and I try to get myself upright in the aftermath of the most important…

By Amy Butler It’s the start of the organizational year around here, so all our committees and boards are gearing up for the work of the church in 2010. I think I could write a whole column, or even a…

By Amy Butler In my opinion, one of the scariest people in the world of a young pastor is the head usher at her first church. This I can pretty much verify by my experience with Edna May Reynolds. To…

By Amy Butler The snow has stopped falling here in Washington. At least for the moment. After almost two weeks, we are still digging out from a few weeks ago when whoever is in charge of weather patterns mistakenly thought…

By Amy Butler Depending on whom you ask, people around here are calling it “Snowpocalypse” or “Snowmaggedon” or a variety of other things, which I will refrain from listing here. I am referring to, of course, the recent dumping of…

By Amy Butler It is not uncommon to encounter me, on occasion (okay, very frequently, actually), complaining bitterly about all the things I did not learn in seminary. In fact, I do have a comprehensive list of such things somewhere,…

By Amy Butler When I left seminary, I was just dying to get into a pastorate so I could try out all the good ideas that had been germinating through all those hours and hours of sitting in a seminary…

By Amy Butler Like many of you, I had the opportunity to spend significant time with my family this holiday season. By “family,” I mean not my immediate family with whom I live everyday, but those whom I only get…