I wanted to respond to Saying Grace’s comment about yesterday’s presbytery meeting, but decided to do it separately since the response got long, and that post was all, like, idealistic and nice and stuff. Rant ahead, proceed with caution.
(Non-Presbyterians, I’m sorry for the inside baseball, but it’s hard to explain and be concise)
So we have […]

Here’s a hot button issue for you…
I haven’t thought all this through completely. I’ve pulled it out of the oven, but I’m not sure the toothpick comes out clean yet. So bear with me.
Tonight was my second to last presbytery Uber-Committee meeting. Of course, I finally located the optimum route to the church in which […]

I had lunch with a friend last week who was kind enough to offer to hear the whole story of my Iona trip, having been there herself.
The next day she sent me two photos from her trip to Edinburgh.
The first is of Thomas Riddell’s grave. Fans of Harry Potter will recognize the name immediately. […]

Jan at A Church for Starving Artists asked a really interesting question (she tends to do that!):

I’m trying to teach missional discipleship [the idea that the church does not exist for its own benefit, but as a place where people are equipped to be sent into the world as Christ’s disciples]. And yet . . […]

1. This weekend is our first (hopefully annual) all-church retreat. This is something that I have spearheaded, though the wonderful retreat team has done most of the work. Ah! Leadership at its best! Come up with a great idea and get other people to implement it!
One of my jobs is to work on […]

I’m back from staff retreat… pretty restful time away. Humid, lots of lightning at night. Good discussions. Moderate stress at how much there is to be done in the next few months. Excited about ministry and invigorated to prepare to move to part time. The girls are sick of my being gone. So am I.
This […]

I had lunch with Laidback Clergypal today. We meet in little ‘burg between our two cities a few times a year. He has been at his church four years and is having some conversations with other congregations. One is a 1,000 member church in search of a head of staff. Ay caramba!
He is a great […]

Mamala and little she-who-is are stuck in the airport, where they have been waiting for six+ hours for their plane to arrive from Boston so they can take off for Florida. Poor little bean. They have at least two hours still to wait. If they end up canceling their flight after all this time I […]

I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday. We have already had some of those tearful epiphany moments that are usually reserved for the end of a conference like this. Professor/Mentor is sharing a lot of poems with us, which is bringing back fond memories of my favorite class at Crusty ol’ Theological Seminary, the people in […]

Enjoying the conference a lot. I have been to this conference center many times and am always the youngest person. (Almost always? thinking No, I think it’s always!) And the women are often the minority. So it’s cool to hear the voices of so many females echoing off these stone walls, and to be more […]

Thus saith the Vatican: non-Catholics aren’t part of the true church.
How’s this for a marketing slogan:
Christianity: Answering Questions Nobody’s Asking Anymore

Thankfully many Catholics have a long history of ignoring headquarters.
My father’s family is big and Irish and Catholic. My dad was supposed to be the priest in the family. He even went to seminary […]

A parishioner gave me this marvelous little invention:

“My yoke is over easy, and my toast is light.”

This past Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, was my fourth anniversary at Suburban Presbyterian Church.
It was a beautiful service, and always is every year. We have a huge round communion table that the flower guild fills with red, orange and yellow candles—twenty-five or thirty of them, at various heights, on a lovely red tablecloth. The effect is […]

The RevGalBlogPals blog (link in the sidebar) is having a discussion of Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis. I was this month’s “host” and wrote the following “review.” I’m posting it here as well just because.

I was excited to have an excuse to read Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, since Jan at A Church […]

So I was a no-show at a lunch meeting yesterday.
The editor and a couple of board members for Independent Denominational Magazine had asked to meet with a group of young (young-er? young-ish?) pastors to talk about how their magazine might be more useful, interesting, or appealing to the next generation of clergy. I think […]

So, I am working on the title for my sermon series inspired by Harry Potter, for July 1, 8 and 15.
The title of the series is giving me trouble. I am toying with “From Heaven to Hogwarts: The Gospel and Harry Potter,” because I’m addicted to alliterative titles. But I’m concerned that in that phrase, […]

To the members of National Crankypants:
So, remember today at the meeting, following the PJC report which was tense and sad, during the prayer which was very sensitively offered by Madame Moderator, when the cell phone rang with Bono singing “Beautiful Day”?
And then, remember when the owner of said cell phone fumbled with it for freakin’ […]

Dear Emergent Guy,
I had the opportunity to hear you speak the other day on “Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier.” Let me first thank you for being direct, honest and prophetic, which many of us sorely need. In my experience of the conference up to that point, it seemed clear that many of us mainline folk […]

“He’s very dour, very grim, very Presbyterian.”
HEY!