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Getting Your Voice Back

I was in San Antonio this past week, a great city in which I once lived and worked, for a meeting of pastors and seminary professors who are exploring together new models for the relationship between local congregations and seminaries/divinity schools. We’ve been...

Small Things

I’m convinced that we’re most likely to make a positive difference—to contribute to meaningful development and lasting change—if we pay close attention to small things over the long haul. Real differences emerge when we consistently tend to details without losing...

Snow Decisions and the Worship of God

I made the decision to cancel our gathering for worship today at First Baptist Church of Asheville. As a safety decision, I am nearly certain it was the right thing to do. Getting to the church campus would be treacherous today, and I don’t want to put people at...

Christmas “Gifts”

There are so many things I like look forward to during the Christmas season: “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” especially that scrawny and scraggly Christmas tree Charilie Brown brings to decorate the set of the Christmas pageant, scrawny and scraggly but green, fragrant...

Lost in God and found by joy

When the angel Gabriel told Mary that God had invited her to become the mother of Jesus, the angel also gave her the news that her (much!) older cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant. The news about Elizabeth was astonishing because Elizabeth was well into her Polident and...

Bad decision. . .

Bad decision. . . At 6:00 this morning, it looked to me like I needed, very reluctantly, to cancel services today. I was especially concerned about the impact anticipated falling temperatures and predicted further snow would have on people trying to get home,...

“Yes” to Love

On an otherwise unremarkable day, in the unremarkable backwoods town of Nazareth, God sent the angel Gabriel to interrupt young Mary’s life with some startling news. As far as we know, Mary had no advance warning and no special preparation for the surprise God sprung...

Prayers for Peace

This Advent season, my prayers are for peace. Peace in our world. God’s good world is divided by controversy, rent by conflict, and torn by warfare. A bittersweet memories of my teenage years is watching USO-sponsored “Bob Hope Specials” performed before American...

Time and the Advent Season

Christians have an odd way of keeping time. Most of the time most of us think of Sunday as the last day of the week and the cap of the weekend; it’s the day before the grind of work and school cranks back up on Monday morning. But, Christian faith invites us to think...