Home of the Darkwater Author
This is an adapted form of the sermon I preached this morning, the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. The text I had in mind while preparing it was the Second Reading, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12. It was the final Sunday of our annual Stewardship Campaign. If you'd like to see a video of this sermon, click here. … Continue reading Renewed in the Belly of the Whale (Sermon)
This is one of a series of posts about a trip I took to walk labyrinths in July 2022. See this post to see why I refer to these labyrinths as my "Emmaus labyrinths." Note: the numbering refers not to how many labyrinths I walked on this trip, but to the total number I've blogged … Continue reading Emmaus Labyrinth #56: Monaghan Presbyterian Church, Dillsburg, PA
I'm looking back on past summers in my life, exploring a theory that my depression gets seasonally worse in the summer each year. Throughout the summer of 2012, I was in a call process, which is the funny Evangelical Lutheran Church in America way of saying I was interviewing at a new church. Call processes … Continue reading The Summer of 2012
This is an adapted form of the sermon I preached this morning. I was not at my regular congregation this morning. Instead, I was doing a "pulpit exchange" with a congregation we partner with. The gospel reading was Mark 9:38-50. Jesus had disciples, people who followed him. He led them, he taught them, he trained … Continue reading Do Not Stop Them!
This is one in a series of posts I’m calling “Snapshots of my Depression.” These are memories of times in my life when my mental illness manifested itself in one way or another. This is the story of how I experienced the call to become a pastor. I've told this story in various ways over … Continue reading Snapshots of My Depression #15: The Belly of the Whale
I've been sharing some poems I recently found from a stash I wrote in 2008. These poems were written at a time when I was stressed out from two new things in my life: I was having some "birth pangs" at being a newly-ordained pastor, and I was also anxious about the upcoming birth of … Continue reading Yoke (poem, 2008)
I found some old poems I wrote in 2008. This was about a year after I was ordained a pastor, and I was having some second thoughts about my calling. Was I really cut out for this? My wife and I were also at this time expecting our first child, and I was anxious about … Continue reading Never Enough Left (poem, 2008)
A number of people have asked me lately how, and why, I became a pastor. This is my attempt to tell that story. If you've known me for a while, you may have heard this before. (You may even be in it.) But I hope it will be at least a little interesting to some … Continue reading Jonah’s Journey: How I Became a Pastor
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