As you travel on a patchwork section of Interstate 75 in Southwest Detroit and cross the River Rouge, this scene emerges before you: towers and tanks spreading out on both sides of the road, constituting a massive Marathon petroleum refinery.
“Did you write this?”
I glanced at the page. Squarish letters in black ink with variable-width strokes. Just the kind I used to make with a chisel-end pen. Just the kind I inscribed on numerous baptismal certificates and wedding records over the years. Definitely my work.
Do you ever get irritated when reading genealogies in the Bible? All that “so-and-so begat so-and-so…” Most of the time, we just skip over these lists of unpronounceable names to get to the good parts that really matter. Yet, genealogies hold deep meaning for us if we pause a moment and consider them closely. This is especially true for the genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
I got off the train after a four-hour ride along the Pacific Ocean and headed to the exit to be met by a pastor from Bunun Presbytery, an aboriginal presbytery on Taiwan’s east coast. I was on my way to lead the fourth pastors retreat in three weeks.
“He never follows through,” the church member complained.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He’ll call and say he’s going to drop by the hospital, or check up on us later, or send us something, but he never does. I think that’s why we’re all wondering if we called the right pastor,” she replied.
I’m hearing more and more complaints like this about pastors from members of struggling churches. It’s not just griping about failing to follow through. It’s critiques that increasingly pastors aren’t doing the small things that make a big difference.
We live in a scary world. Every morning, the news is filled with stories of natural disasters, carnage on roadways and diseases that we have not yet found a way to control. The beat goes on, and the reality of our own finitude is too intense to deny.
Visitors and staff at the Presbyterian Center have the Rev. Donna Frischknecht Jackson to thank for the velvet ropes surrounding the Nativity scene in the lobby of denominational headquarters.
People born between 1977 and 1985 are often referred to as millennials. However, nine years is hardly enough to qualify as a separate generation, and so many who are born in that time frame feel as though they don’t quite belong. They have one foot in Generation X and one in Generation Y. They are the bridge between an analog childhood and a digital adulthood, and we often remind them of that.
’Tis the season of holy anticipation — and unholy madness. To encounter the holy, and to counteract the madness, churches are offering creative ways to slow down and smell the Christmas trees. Here’s a roundup of some of the ways churches are helping their communities be still, breathe in the incarnation and carry hope into the world.
Perhaps society is to blame for the full-blown Christmas decorations that appear in churches as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey carcass is thrown into the pot for soup. After all, when Christmas shows up in stores as early as September, who can blame worshipers for wanting the sanctuary halls to be decked as well?
