In order to keep in touch with parishioners, many pastors make phone calls, send greeting cards, emails, text and direct messages. This is the result of multi-generational ministry and the influence of social media. In an effort to reach our…
It’s ‘Bring Your Family To Work Day’
Pastors’ families are rated on appearance, behavior, personal relationship choices, report cards, salvation and sports performance. There are scorecards in every pew. So look alive, family! It’s Sunday and it’s game time.
The invisible fanny pack of male pastor privilege
In my Sixth Sense voice: “I see fanny packs.” Peggy McIntosh saw a knapsack in 1989. First appearing in Peace and Freedom Magazine, her now famous article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” included a list of white privileges or…
Happy New Life!
By Starlette McNeill I need to see your hands. Put the pen down and slowly back away from the list. Before you begin your annual declaration of independence from unhealthy food and toxic people, before you purchase the gym membership…
Before we say, ‘I forgive you’
By Starlette McNeill I am in a place that I had not anticipated and certainly could not have prepared for. It is the same feeling that I had after the shooting of nine bowed heads at Mother Emmanuel AME Church…
The self-care struggle
By Starlette McNeill I am sitting in the chair and my feet are in the water. I agree that the temperature is good. My pedicure has begun but the argument in my head continues. Do I really have time for…
Believing on our own terms
By Starlette McNeill Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian-German poet and novelist, said of his work Stories of God that he was “busied with transferring God from the sphere of rumor into the realm of direct and daily experiencing.” His words…
Love already won
My grandmother, Eva Mae Thomas, was my first catechizer and theologian. At the age of 12, she put a pen and notepad in my hand and asked me to “write down all the Scriptures that the preacher says.” There were…
Larger than the Church
By Starlette McNeill “If you are without a church home, then we invite you to come forward at this time.” This is the invitation that is extended in most, if not all, congregations after the delivery of the sermon. Having…
Preaching like a girl
By Starlette McNeill “You hit like a girl. “ “You throw like a girl.” Once upon a time, someone decided that being a girl meant lacking strength and ability. Sure, there are implied and direct references to the gullibility and…
Losing Sunday
By Starlette McNeill I have served as an associate minister at a handfull of churches in the District of Columbia. All were unpaid and offered too few opportunities for mentoring, leadership development, preaching and the ecclesiastical practice of one’s gifts…
MACBF’s ‘net’ widens to include a full- time coordinator
By Starlette McNeill Members of the Mid-Atlantic Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gathered at Seven Locks Baptist Church in Potomac, Md., for a meeting with Suzii Paynter, the executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. It began like any other meeting —…