Throughout my 30 years in ministry, I’ve sat with women and their families as they faced difficult decisions about their pregnancies. I’ve been invited into tender conversations about trauma, abuse, assault, the health of the mother, viability, quality of life. Hard stuff. Holy stuff. In those moments, you do not take sides, or take a stand, as a pastor. You lean in. You listen. You love. You hold space for … [Read more...]
Leave Your Cocoon
Home sweet home. Have you ever uttered that phrase at some point in your life? You walk through the door after a long vacation or road trip—exhausted, relieved, thankful to have finally arrived—and you say, “Home sweet home.” You’ve been away at college, and after a long semester of homesickness, you pull into the driveway and that wave of nostalgia washes over you, and you say, “Home sweet home.” At the end of a long day at the office, or a long stay in a hospital, or a long two … [Read more...]
Expand Your Clan
If you knew everything about the future, what would you do differently today? It’s a question futurist, Faith Popcorn, has been asking for decades. Popcorn is an expert in cultural and consumer trends—the “Nostradamus of Marketing.” As a future-caster, she’s identified sweeping societal movements in business, politics, and human behavior that predict how Americans will think, what they’ll value, and ultimately, what they’ll buy. She advises dozens of CEOs of … [Read more...]
Election Day Survival Guide
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story. Your boss, he says, is heading up to Breckenridge for an extended vacation. She plans to be gone for a long time, giving you no idea of when she’ll return. She’s very wealthy, by the way. Business has been very good, profits are up—thanks, in part, to you and your hard work. Before she leaves town, she pools together all of her liquid assets, and she calls you and the rest of her trusted managers into the conference room for a staff … [Read more...]
Foxhole Promises
With Memorial Day just a few days away, I’ve been reflecting on a conversation I had with a now-deceased parishioner who, along with more than 150,000 other soldiers, had stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. While he lived to tell about it, he often jokingly acknowledged that he might have been killed had it not been for his short stature. “The bullets flew right over my head,” he confessed. “It was the only time in my life that I had been grateful to be short.” Surviving the … [Read more...]
