This past Sunday, I stepped into the pulpit at Immanuel UMC for my first morning as their new pastor. I had actually been in the pulpit before. Working with Imagine No Malaria, this had been one of many churches I had visited over the past year and a half. There was something very different, however,…
How Does Your Garden Grow?
One of my biggest disappointments about moving in the middle of the summer is that I didn’t have a chance to put in a garden. Transporting peas and tomatoes and peppers and squash across the state just doesn’t work very well… not that I had time to plant and weed and care for a garden…
Unimagineable…
I think in some ways, I’m still in shock. Or exhausted. or both. At 2:45 on Monday afternoon, we announced that we had raised $2,009,907 for Imagine No Malaria as the Iowa Annual Conference. I had spent my lunch break sitting on the floor of the treasurer’s office counting the dollars that districts had raised…
Finding Faith at the Lunch Table
If I think back to the first moment when faith sunk in deep into my life, it would be sitting around a lunch table at Simpson College. I wasn’t actually a college student then, but a sophomore in high school participating in our Youth Annual Conference. It was hosted there at the college every year…
Bandwidth
This week at an annual conference worship meeting, Jorge Lockward, who works with the General Board of Global Ministries asked a simple question: “Do you have the bandwidth for that?” He wasn’t talking about our technical capabilities in the venue. He was asking about our spiritual, physical, and emotional capacity to take on…
What I am learning as I give up social media for Lent…
#1 – I seek praise, sympathy, solidarity through social media. The smallest, most insignificant thing could happen and my first instinct is to post it so that other people will comment and respond. It is attention-seeking behavior that often slips into a self-centered focus. Having to constantly fight the urge to post has led me…
Winter is Coming
As an introvert, I dont often make small talk with fellow passengers on a flight. Now that you can use a kindle during taxi and takeoff, my nose is often in a book or playing a game on my phone. But today, even my game of “caveman story” couldn’t save me from a conversation with…
With Careful Intention
I have a nasty smart phone habit. Every commercial break, every need to stretch, every chance I get, I check my phone. I browse through Facebook posts. I glance at tweets. I absorb a lot and pay little attention to what is happening right here, right now. I realized that I often do not interact,…