A year or so ago, I came across a description of the pastoral life that rang as true for me as any I have read or heard. It comes from Garret Keizer’s A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of…

Ever since Arlin J. Rothauge published Sizing Up a Congregation for New Member Ministry1 in 1983, mainline Protestants have been using the terms family,pastoral, program, and corporation to identify congregations by size, starting with the smallest.2 A sociological axiom underlying…

I received a lesson in the relationship of faith and money the morning my oldest child was born. I was 29 and serving a small church in Florida; my wife was teaching at the nearby state university. For the first time…

Not too long ago I stood in Explorers Hall of the National Geographic Society’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., staring at the James Caird, a 22-foot whaleboat. Eighty-five years ago, six men sailed this boat 800 miles across open, brutally cold,…

The prophet Ezekiel tells of a vision in which he is sent into a valley of bones by the Lord. The dry bones symbolize the people’s despondency in their time of exile, and God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?”…

In some years winter, spring, summer, and fall flow seamlessly. In other years the seasons are punctuated by devastating droughts, paralyzing snowstorms, and overwhelming floods. Seasons of ministry for rabbis and ministers are equally unpredictable. Sometimes the life stages flow…

As a teenager, at the height of the so-called “youth culture,” I accepted the notion that the older you get, the more inauthentic you become. A cautious and conventional kid, I might not have been the one you would expect…

Perhaps, when Abraham sought to save Sodom by interceding on behalf of the city, his attempt was rooted in the Hebrew tradition of trusting in the presence of 50 righteous men to provide salvation. But he was not assured that…

For a number of months I wondered how I would know when it was time to retire. I took a couple of months off two summers before I did retire, hoping that an extended vacation and time for reflection would…