As I hope you realize, there is a lot about these Christian spiritual disciplines that that simply cannot be included on Sunday. My goal is only to make introductions, a bit like connecting people who do not know one another but I suspect would benefit from doing so. I trust God to grow the “relationships”…

Given our focus this week on prayer and the current realities of the world, I thought I would share another prayer by Douglas McKelvey as my Friday offering, this one titled “A Liturgy for Those Flooded by Too Much Information”. It reads in part: “Guard us then from shutting down our empathy or walling off…

We’ve been sitting with meditation this week as a way of sitting with God. As part of my effort to lead by example, I thought I would share some from a journaling exercise I did, coupled with meditation on a piece of artwork: “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” by Hokusai in 1831. Before I start…

We began our journey learning about and practicing the spiritual disciplines this past Sunday. And since we had not yet begun to explore a particular discipline, I encouraged you all to practice “awareness,” insisting that awareness is one of those ways of seeing that grows with practice. My expectations in commending this practice to you…

It is relatively common in churches to talk about gifts. We talk about spiritual gifts like those mentioned in Romans 12 (as one example). We talk about gifts in terms of cultivated talents like musical prowess or public speaking. We talk about gifts in terms of financial contributions. We even talk about the gift of…

On my father’s side of the family, my people hail from West Virginia. Due to information not being passed on before the death of elders and the burning of a church that held all the family records, that is a bit of a genealogical dead end otherwise. My grandfather grew up on a mountain in…

At the close of Sunday’s service, I picked up a guitar and played a version of Psalm 23 by Trevor Morgan. I’ve long found its melody had a kind of haunting beauty to it, and Trevor Morgan doesn’t get the play on the radio that he deserves as a musician and artist. While I anticipated…

It was only when I was in college — after having quite literally grown up in a local church! — that I first encountered the expansive history of Christianity and its rich and layered traditions of spiritual inquiry and discipline. As you might expect, these discoveries and experiences kindled within me a variety of emotions.…

Who are you? Alice, it seems, is not done with us yet…… or else the Spirit is manifesting as the Caterpillar and persistently, annoyingly blowing her frankincense-scented smoke rings at us to hold us in this space of self-discovery a little longer. Who are you? Whilst reading in Revelation, thinking about Jesus, and reflecting on…

As a pastor, I like to play around with the order of worship. I don’t ascribe to change for the sake of change, but there are good reasons to adapt the order from time to time. Looking back over the years, I realize I’ve almost always adopted a seasonal approach to this, giving consideration to…