Fight, Flight, or…What?
My latte is mostly gone. I’ve done as much work as I can do at the coffee shop. I look at my day planner as I prepare to head to […]
The Need for Spiritual Agility
My middle school tennis coach used to arrange the balls in a small pile at the center of each half-court on occasion. As soon as we approached the courts, we […]
Lament in a Purple Church
Increasingly, I look around at the state of the world and my response is to lament. My heart breaks at all the violence and injustice. In my ministry, I oversee […]
What’s a clergy group to do?
I have a friend, also a pastor. She wants to start a clergywomen group, wants to know what I’d like to get out of a thing like that. We both […]
Epiphany
Buford probably never paid homage to another person in her life. Widowed young, no children, innumerable opinions, Buford got to work and never stopped— fixing her house, tending her garden, […]
Leadership Metaphors: Garden and Machine
I was only about a month into my first call as solo pastor of a small Presbyterian congregation when a new class of elders rolled onto the Session, which is […]
Wear the Red Dress
I will wear red. I will wear the red dress, even though you will talk behind your hands to wonder out loud – what is she wearing why is she […]
A Pastor’s Scope for Imagination
When I was growing up, I would travel to Minnesota each year to visit my maternal grandparents. My grandmother had very strict parameters as to what content she would watch […]
A Conference Story
As young clergy women gathered in Vancouver, Canada, for YCWI’s tenth anniversary conference earlier this July, the scenery was gorgeous and the weather was spectacular. The conference was uplifting, invigorating, […]
A Liturgy for Leaving
Like many 21st-century churches, the church I serve is a “nested” congregation: it has no building of its own, and rents space from another congregation. Some churches arrive at this […]
