The word pastor comes from our job as shepherds. Of course, Jesus is the real shepherd, but we pastors try our best to represent him well as we seek to care for his flock. Jesus taught us that he’s the kind of shepherd who cares if a single sheep goes astray and wanders into danger, [...]
Yesterday afternoon, my kids were starting to get a little bit of cabin fever. It was hot, and the air had been smoky for most of the day, but by late afternoon, the air had cleared a bit and a cool breeze was blowing. “Why don’t you go outside and play, Johnny?” I [...]
My wife woke me up for morning prayer this morning and I went back to sleep. This was a bad choice because there’s a lot going on in my life and the life of our church right now. As a church grows, it can no longer connect everyone “automatically.” It’s a much more conscious and [...]
Last week, I attended a “round table” of sexual assault survivors and members of the clergy. The honesty of the six women who had survived sexual assault was extraordinary - and extremely difficult to hear. But the hardest part of what they had to say was the part about how their churches had treated them. [...]
First a word of introduction. I had the great pleasure of attending the Bayside Church (of Granite Bay, CA) THRIVE 2008 conference. It’s nice that such a huge and wealthy church - that could easily hold a world-class conference just for its own leaders - invites leaders from other churches to come and learn and share fellowship [...]
Last Sunday, many things went wrong in worship at Trinity.
Now we’re not one of those churches were everything is polished and perfect, but even we are not accustomed to the sheer number of small things that went wrong, from people being out sick to sound system glitches to bulletin information being wrong. And you know [...]
Jim Edwards, one of the speakers at the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors’ Conference this week, spent some time this morning talking about various virtues and about how we can make a decision to act in ways that we might not feel yet. An example for me might be to help clean up the kitchen even [...]