Ministers are not rock stars. Ministers are not celebrities. It has to be said. It just does. It has to be said because there is a minister asking for a plane. It has to be said because there is a minister who buys a house and property valued at close to 5 million dollars. It has to …
When I was in my second year of seminary expressing the desire to purse a call to the pastorate, I was told by more than one person that if I wanted to be a senior pastor I needed to start either as a youth minister or an associate pastor and then “work my way up.” …
Being a minister is really hard. Being a minister during this transformational time in church history, is even harder. There is a temptation while looking at declining budgets, declining memberships, and uncertain futures to begin to compete with each other over potential members or to try to outdo each other with better buildings and programs. We …
The problem with answer this question is that the answer is decidedly different if your woman is a pastor and your woman is a man. A study reveals the shameful reality that women clergy are making 76 cents to every dollar their male counterparts make, which is worse than the national average. This is an especially disturbing reality …
I write and share because I care deeply about the future of the church. I write and share to start a conversation and that’s just what happened after yesterday’s post. I had several people who asked whether I universally support same-sex marriage. I responded that I won’t comment universally on same-sex marriage as I won’t …
When I was approached by a member of our church to perform the wedding to her girlfriend, I wasn’t surprised or shocked. Since I started classes in seminary, I knew that this would be a part of my ministry as a pastor of a church and as a minister. We studied and discussed the LGBTQ …
Our oldest daughter has an email account that she uses in conjunction with her Chromebook. She uses her computer at school and for reading books, but just recently since the summer, she has also used it to communicate with her parents as she has developed as a reader and a writer. Yesterday, I got an …
He didn’t know there would be a screen between when he said, “I have a dream.” A screen between that would intervene And make us forget the humanity we try to hide because of our pride sitting on the other side of the screen between. It’s easy to type words we wouldn’t say if we …
As I watched the Republican #GOPDebate last night, I was struck by two things in particular. First, any reference to God used the masculine pronoun and second, any reference to the president used the masculine pronoun. Huckabee did it. Jeb did it. Cruz did it. It would be easy to say that these references represent …
As I watched the State of the Union address last night, I realized it would serve us well as ministers and churches to reflect on the state of our churches just as the president does every year with our union. It’s hard to reflect objectively on the work we do as ministers because it means …
