300 words a day

As much as I would like to believe that I am not a sheep, I am one. Not, I suppose, a blind follower of a random mindless herd. (Unless that’s what all followers of Christ are). I like to believe that I have the capacity to think with some originality. I like to believe that […]

Rich Dixon helps us think about mission: Our weekend in Memphis featured a talk at Melissa & Dudley’s Heartsong Church, where a man asking one of those penetrating questions: What’s your REAL mission? Rich’s Ride wasn’t primarily about fund-raising. Actually, our project was a pretty inefficient fundraiser. There are faster, easier, and more scalable ways […]

I write regularly here about my work as a hospital chaplain. I’ve been talking recently about my work as a teacher. I don’t talk much about my work as a researcher.  I’ve been part of Arbor Research Group since 2016. People come to us with questions about their organizations and their communities, and we use […]

(I’m thinking about presence and Jesus). Jesus went to the wedding. Cana was 16 miles, a day’s walk, from Capernaum. Turning water into wine has become a humorous reference. We often preach (or laugh) about the miraculous sign, but there’s a story wrapped around the wine. The story is about Jesus going to a family […]

God. It’s been a hard week. I feel like we say that to you a lot, these days. We used to be able to predict what would happen in a week. Then we resigned ourselves to 2020 Bingo cards of disaster and disruption. “Didn’t see that coming,” we say.“I thought it couldn’t get worse, and then it did,” we say. And […]