But to preach the gospel is not just to tell the truth but to tell the truth in love and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being…
Buttrick and Buechner in the balcony of heaven
It was Carlyle Marney, I think, who first named our personal saints in the “great cloud of witnesses” as those in “the balcony of heaven.” On the occasion of the death of Frederick Buechner, I offer these memories of the…
My two phone calls to Frederick Buechner
In 1978, someone gave me a copy of Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. I read the first entry — “Agnostic: Some people all of the time and all people some of the time,” and we were off and running. By the time…
Frederick Buechner influenced millions with his insightful writing and quotable lines
One of the most prolific Christian authors and most widely quoted writers of the 20th century died Aug. 15 at age 96. Only the late C.S. Lewis might have surpassed Frederick Buechner in writings that made their way into sermons…
Celebrating a new generation of ministers overtaken by ‘the call’
In the 50th year of my ordination to “the gospel ministry,” I can’t recall the exact time when I first experienced “the call” from God to do that. Given that I was Texas Baptist born and bred, I may have…
The civility of discourse
“They’ll tell anything on you down in town.” So the serpent-handling woman says as she sits on her Appalachian front porch, killing flies and defending her church’s approach to the sixteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Whether in cheap novels, academic…
Grounded enough to notice when Jesus shows up
I love the city. I first fell in love with metropolitan life as a 20-something pastor in San Francisco. Now, years later, while I still retreat to the mountains or desert or ocean for some extra peace and inspiration, “urban”…