By Amy Butler I recently returned from a week at Preacher Camp. There are many things to recommend about the experience of retreating with excellent colleagues to plan preaching, and I’ve often written about the gift of this kind of…
Choosing adaptive change
By Amy Butler Church leadership experts offer plenty of recommendations for those of us crazy enough to take on the challenge of trying to help churches move into the future. I sit in these conference meetings and listen. I read…
Finding the better path
By Amy Butler Turns out it’s not all umbrella drinks and movie-worthy sunsets in paradise. For the last few weeks I’ve been visiting my home state of Hawaii, where there is an increasingly critical issue of affordable housing and more…
A lavish welcome to the table
By Amy Butler I’ve always been a little sensitive about being left out, and I don’t even need a therapy session to tell you why. When I was a little kid we would visit my grandparents every summer, and during…
Everyone had an opinion — except when they didn’t
By Amy Butler “Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”— Viktor E. Frankl This past Friday I watched as my Facebook…
Inappropriate disclosure or healthy vulnerability?
By Amy Butler I recall once, in college, sitting in the congregation during a Sunday morning worship service and listening intently to the pastor’s sermon. About halfway through he began to talk about a session he’d recently had with his…
Congregational shifts are unsettling but essential
By Amy Butler It’s the first anniversary of my work as pastor at my church. To mark the occasion, I think it’s only appropriate to write a bit about — change. I think it would be a fairly objective statement…
What kind of church are we building?
By Amy Butler Yesterday when I pronounced the benediction at the end of worship, I told the congregation to gather all the courage they could muster, turn from the work of worship, and go out to change the world. Honestly,…
4 ways tension will make your church a better congregation
By Amy Butler In case anyone forgot to tell you, life in church is filled with tension. I believe this with all my heart. In fact, I’ve always said that if you leave a worship service in which I’ve led…
Rediscovering the space in which can God show up
By Amy Butler “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” I’m pretty sure James Joyce wasn’t thinking of the minister’s experience of Holy Week when he wrote that sentence filled with deep and resounding truth, but any…
Resurrection hurts
By Amy Butler In what must have been a slow news week, I saw a story last week about those iconic Easter candy chicks, Peeps. It seems that about 5 million Peeps are made each day in the months leading…
Understanding one’s life as part of God’s work of redemption
By Amy Butler That day as I stood in front of the gathered congregation, I could feel their dismay — an almost desperate exasperation and lack of hope at the state of their community. It was my first congregational meeting…