Can These Bones Live: Reflections on the YCWI Conference
Everyone in worship the Sunday after the YCWI Conference was asking Rev. Maggie Rust about her time away, noting that it looked like she had such a good time and […]
Posts
Support for Women Who Pastor
Since the highly publicized Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) vote on women being pastors (which wasn’t actually news to many of us female clergy), my social media feed has been flooded […]
A Ministry of Ending
Would we close? Or could we keep going? It was the question that occupied my mind as I drove to meet with a denominational leader about my congregation. And it […]
Video Chat Life
I let my breath out slowly through my teeth as my baby kept screaming. I took out my phone and sent a friend a video chat of me, bags under […]
Pastoral Care
“Does the Pastoral Care team care for the Pastor or for other people?” It was a fair question from one of the new Elders at his first meeting, a day-long […]
Letting the Church Be the Church for their Pastor
One of my favorite images of a pastor is that of shepherd. As a shepherd, I take care of my flock, making sure they are fed in belly and spirit, […]
Fewer Gender Binaries, More Expansive Leadership
We are saddened and frustrated whenever male colleagues in ministry seem to be suffering amnesia about the power of women’s leadership in shaping the church. Recently, a United Methodist clergyman […]
Not Just the Future but the Present
An eleven-year-old stood behind a rough wooden podium on the side of a mountain at Henderson Settlement, a United Methodist mission site in Kentucky. Her back was straight, her face […]
We Really, Really Love You
After what might have been my fifth phone call of the morning, the dichotomy hit me again: I was delivering very sad and difficult news about the death of a […]
“Out of the Bathroom, Into the World”
“You need to develop a pastoral identity. It comes with time. Don’t worry, it will come.” One of my dearest seminary professors told us this over and over, and I […]
