Living in God’s time
When my father was in the last few months of his life, we bought him a clock. This was a date-and-time clock, intended to help keep him oriented as his dementia worsened. It cycled through the date and time, day after day, until one day in June, it suddenly changed to read “It’s Monday Morning.” No time. No date. Just a day and a general time of day. As my dad’s concept of time faded, somehow this clock changed to this very basic way of orienting to time.
Is it time to separate church and social media like we have separated church and state?
Rather than partnering with Facebook, churches and other religious organizations would do well to maintain a critical distance and a healthy line of separation between themselves and the social media giant. Just as the separation of church and state contributes to a healthy flourishing of faith in physical space, perhaps maintaining a separation of church and social media will likewise contribute to a healthy flourishing of faith online.
Trauma and grace: A response to domestic violence
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In the United States, 20 people are physically abused every minute and an estimated 1 in 3 women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. Given these statistics, we should expect a number of women and men and children in our congregations dealing with current domestic violence situations or recovering from the trauma of them. What then shall we do?
COVID-19 era leadership
The church has been significantly affected by the lingering impacts of COVID-19. The COVID era and its related impacts are here to stay. We would do well as pastors to understand how we can be most effective as we lead.
Rights, public safety and common sense
While we live in a democracy where we are entitled to exercise our “unalienable rights,” public safety has not registered on the hearts, minds, and souls of some Americans. While our rights are indeed important, we need to be alive and healthy to fight for these rights. May we find it in our collective hearts to truly be our brother’s keeper in our efforts to keep one another safe. May we look beyond the narrow view of “rights” to see the broad perspective of public safety.