During his visit to Asia last week, a group of Malaysian school kids asked President Obama about his greatest regret. “I regret not having spent more time with my mother,” Obama candidly told the students when asked about his life regrets. “Because she died early – she got cancer right around when she was my…

I used to cringe at the word “ecumenical”. It smacked of engineered truces and kumbayah emotions. It conjured images for me of 1960′s World Council of Churches meetings and “So a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar” jokes – only the jokes never seemed to have a good punchline since everyone involved in…

“If you find the right word, it paints a thousand pictures.” – Richard Foster, from his session entitled “The Humiliation of the Word in our Day” at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing. I heard dozens of “right words” during the last few days. Some of them came from speakers like Anne Lamott, Richard Foster, Luci…

Part of the delight of my seminary experience so far (I’ve completed two classes and am enrolled in a church history course this quarter) has been gaining new thinking partners. The promise that seminary would introduce me to new thinking partners was alluring bait for me when I first spoke with an admissions officer at the school…

File this story under “4-H Fail” or perhaps “The Green Acres Effect”. Here’s a post just for fun today. Enjoy. When my family moved to the far edge of Waukesha, WI in 1995, I was determined to help our family acclimate to our new zip code as quickly as possible. Several new friends told me their kids…

In my earlier posts in this series, I queried pastors and church leaders about their experience pastoring those over 40. (Click here if you’d like to have a peek at those posts.) Those responsible for shepherding their congregations are stretched in dozens of different directions on any given day. A discussion about how to effectively minister…