Have you ever thought about the difference between places and spaces? A place (as I would define it) is a location with determined boundaries. A space is the opposite; it is a location with undetermined boundaries. Examples may help here….
You can’t cover up and soar with faith
My wife and I got married on an important day in American political infamy. June 17, 1972. Oh, you do not know what this celebrates? Perhaps it is because the event — the Watergate break-in — is not nearly as…
Sometimes, churches need to ‘die’
A 100 year-old plus-mainline-congregation closes its doors. The church dies. What’s left? An empty shell of a building and a disbanded group of church members. Many have predicted the death of mainline churches for the last 20 years. People have…
The Honeymoon
We still talk about the period after a couple is married as the honeymoon. This is more than a short period of time to get away to a resort or vacation spot. This is the time when the couple begins…
Food courts and fender benders
Pam Durso We have not yet arrived — not completely and totally. Baptist women serving in ministry still hear words of opposition, encounter suspicions and doubts and experience the pain of exclusion. We are not fully embraced by all, not…
Baptists and Episcopalians together?
In my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity, I suggested this as something that “ordinary Christians” can do locally to further the visible unity of the church: “If your own denomination has been in…official…
Receiving hospitality
Alan Roxburgh’s recent book, “Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood,” lead me to a different sort of reading of a recent Sunday Gospel lesson from Mark 6:1-13. Jesus goes into his own home town with his disciples, teaches in the…
Church: The unwanted product
I was having a conversation recently with our pastoral intern and he told me with some frustration on his face,“Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to push a product that no one wants.” (He was referring to the Church). During…
Competition or Communion?
For years my church struggled with what to do about Wednesday nights. Because we were largely a congregation of university students, the conventional wisdom was to do anything that involved a stage. Speakers, musicians, lights, observers sitting in rows of…