Last week I pondered access, and I appreciate the number of you who connected with me to share your appreciation for my open wrestling and your affirmation that you understood I was not merely whinging publicly. This Sunday, we will be exploring the Christian spiritual discipline of confession; and as I have been preparing all…

I’m thinking about access today. They are doing some work on the road that fronts the parsonage. As has been my experience with most roadworks projects in every place I have lived, information about what is happening and when is not altogether forthcoming and clear. Right now, I can say with certainty they are digging…

Were I a betting person, I would bet that by this point in the summer (at some point, at least) you have been outdoors without shoes on your feet. Maybe it was a trip to the lake. Maybe it was in your backyard. Maybe it was during some water-play with children. But it likely happened.…

Director of Music / Piano Accompanist Department: Worship Arts Reports To: Senior Pastor Job Type: Part-time Summary: Community Baptist Church (CBC), an American Baptist Church in Warrenville, IL (30 miles west of Chicago), is seeking a part-time Director of Music / Piano Accompanist to lead and grow our music program. This role involves close collaboration…

American Baptist Churches USA elected Joshua Kagi to serve a two year term as President of the Denomination, beginning on January 1, 2026. Below is a video of his remarks at the Biennial Meeting earlier this month.  

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…

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…