Bishop's Blog
Among other truths, we learned a couple of weeks ago that the deacon’s call is not a call to a comfortable life. And because that’s the case, there’s a kind of death that happens, and it’s meant to be that way. We know Bonhoeffer’s famous line, “When Jesus Christ calls a man, he calls him…
Over and over again, God has turned my mourning into dancing. That’s one reason I identify with the psalmist who says these exact words in Psalm 30: Oh Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks…
Not long ago, I was sending an email to a friend of mine. He is a young Reformed minister, and for him, the whole occasion of Maundy Thursday is foreign – at least to his branch of that tradition. So I sent him an email describing a little bit about what we would normally do…
Not long ago, I was officiating at a deacon ordination, and I was walking through the church before the service began as I, I sometimes do. I was a little preoccupied, thinking about things, praying about the service. And I came up the aisle, and as I began to come around the aisle, a church…
In the Diocese of Central Florida, we recently commended some new leaders to our deanery boards. And as we did this, we handed them two symbols: a cincture (for all the deans, purple because they operate on behalf of the diocese) and a gavel (for the president). Both of these things in some way symbolize…
It’s interesting that as we go through this season of nonstop news about COVID-19, we celebrated the feast day of Gregory the Great on March 12, who was appointed pope in AD 590, after his predecessor, Pelagius II, had died of the plague. Gregory inherited, pestilence, famine and war. And in that context in the…
In the last post, we saw that the power/control decision is committed to strictly maintaining the status quo in a way that actually penalizes the innovators First of all, if we’re going to make decisions in the midst of these sort of interregnum situations for which there is no easy answer, it requires of…
I’m sharing these thoughts just before the celebration of James the Just, and this leads me to consider what is, in essence, the “Inside Baseball” story, which is about the tension between James, in essence, putting forth an answer to the riddle of what happened in the Jerusalem Council, and the continuing work of the…
© Lifeontheside In Part 1 of this blog, we discussed how the call to ministry, particularly a call to a new position, can leave us feeling as though we’re in a precarious position. It’s as though we were navigating a tightrope and having to keep everything in balance. But this unhealthy perspective is far from…
A call to ministry is, in some ways, a call to a precarious place – especially when it comes to our inner attitude. I want to share a precarious attitude and then one that is more in line with what the scripture teaches about ministry, particularly a call to a new ministry position. Walking a…