By Amy Butler It’s funny how different seasons of life can hold totally different experiences, constant invitations to reflect on the gift and adventure of human life, ongoing opportunities to consider — and shift — how we live. I was…
Dying well, part 1
Do you want to die well? Do you want to die with dignity? I suspect that desire resides in the hearts of just about everyone. But, what does it really mean to die well? I’ll admit, at 32 and healthy,…
3 Leadership lessons from Mark Driscoll
Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll announced he resigned as the senior pastor of 13,000 person Mars Hill Church. This announcement comes after months of a leave of absence and years of controversy. Driscoll’s rise to fame in the Christian world has…
Sisters mourned husbands with different emotions, same Baptist faith
By Bill Webb It was one tragic event involving two siblings and two different reactions of grief, spirituality and faith. Sisters Heather Gilion and Holly Snell recently shared with Baptists in Missouri how the deaths of their husbands in a…
Saying goodbye
I conducted a memorial service recently for a friend who passed away after a lengthy illness. The service was a time of celebration among family and friends for a life well lived. Despite the lengthy illness of the deceased, she…
Missing Gwen
By Pam Durso It has now been a year since that moment on Aug. 27, 2013, when I learned that Gwen had died. She was my friend. She was my pastor. She was my Panera Bread lunch date, my fellow…
Desperate to avoid (dealing with) death
Recently I spoke at a conference of Retirement Community Chaplains. My thesis was that people who deal with the vicissitudes of life best tend to deal best with the reality of death. There are 72-year-old men and women who seem to…
The problem of violence
I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened in 1999. Schools across the country went into lockdown. Most of us were left mouths open watching news reports, trying to process and understand what happened and why. Schools and other…
Grief isn’t a disease
She’d lost her husband to a terrible, slow disease and now had just buried her son. I asked her how she was. “Some days, she said, “I just stand in the middle of my house and scream.” What a wise…