Ministry is like most occupations: there are times when, in the immortal words of Johnny Paycheck, when you want to take this job and shove it. So what do you do when you're a pastor and Mr. Paycheck is singing to you? For you? Well, as a survivor of a few of those...
I had lunch with someone from the church this past week who encouraged me to "trust the God in others."As it turned out, the timing -- and the advice -- could not have been better.Because yesterday at Good Shepherd was a first of its kind: an invitation to "salvation...
I admit that I have an uneasy relationship with the uniquely Southern, Protestant tradition of the "altar call": the invitation for people to come forward at the end of the service to surrender their lives to Christ. The source of my ambivalence? Well, on the one...
In reading David Browne's Fire And Rain, a musical & cultural exploration of the pivotal-but-overlooked year of 1970, I learned some interesting factoids about Simon & Garfunkel's iconic Bridge Over Troubled Water. For example, did you know that Simon originally...
At last Saturday's Rivergate concert, I briefly stood next to a man who struck up a conversation with me."You came to my house a couple of years ago to invite us to church," he said. "And I just want you to know that we've been coming ever since."Now: that visit was...
As I listened to some of the leading pastoral voices in Methodism speak on such subjects as avoiding burnout, staff relationships, and time management, a question kept running through my mind:Is what it took to get us where we are what it will take to get us where we...
Throughout the years, I've had several occasions to serve in pastoral roles on both sides of my family -- with my extended family and with Julie's.It's usually pretty nerve-wracking.Why? Because the shift in roles is so dramatic. These are people who changed my...
Yesterday, my friend & colleague Dennis Sult and I visited with a woman who after battling cancer for several years has decided to stop chemotherapy and begin Hospice care. Surrounded by family, she acknowledged that she was "sick and tired of being sick and...
In last Thursday's post, I mentioned a return trip from a conference in South Carolina with some of my Methodist preacher friends.The group with which I travelled is a collection of twenty-five pastors from Western North Carolina Methodism who are part of what is...
I've been thinking this week about the where of pastoral care.Here's where some of it has happened for the pastoral care givers at our church just in the past few months:In hospital rooms;By a lakeshore;In the church lobby;At the county jail;In the Worship Center;At...