First and foremost, to be authentic we must always be a people who point towards resurrection for all people in the love of God. We don’t always have to say it quite like that, but we do need to live it just like that. Everything we do points to that fact: that God’s love transforms our deaths and turns them into new life.
I have never noticed or perceived that people were not interested in God anymore. People are incredibly hungry for God. It isn’t that people don’t want to experience God. It is that The Establishment Church of the 1950s is failing to be a place where that happens.
For this gospel writer, the story didn’t end at the Resurrection, or the Ascension, or even here at Pentecost. The story would continue forever, because the Holy Spirit was at work through every generation.
And, this particular scripture lesson really resonates with me. This is because my faith has been shaped by more than just a love-affair with the Episcopal church, but also, like the disciples here, a paralyzing fear of ghosts.
Last weekend, I designed a lock-in retreat for the 14 7th and 8th graders in my Confirmation group. They are a group of stupendously intelligent young people, each with amazing gifts for thinking, theologizing and creating things. Here are some ideas from that retreat that are worth sharing.
Often times, churches get confused about the purpose of their youth ministry. Kids have sports, schools, and after school programs to be involved in that’s all about them and their space. But in the congregation, I’d say it’s a different thing.
In the church, the congregation as a whole is called to raise children from infancy to adulthood in a wide, extended family. (more…)
A lot of people are very invested in the Hunger Games, many of them young women. Here are 10 things that youth ministers ought to know about the novels and how they affect their kids.
Despite all the grief that this story gets for being violent, strange, and over dramatic, it also teaches young people how to preserve a self in great danger, and how to resist oppression through genuine acts of kindness. Even the evil empire that the revolution resists is a thinly veiled Roman Empire. (more…)
One of my earliest memories of church as a child was of Advent candles. I don’t really have an image in my head, but rather the calm cadence of my mother’s voice, and the smell of sulfur after a match struck. It’s a very sense-based memory, but it is a memory of watching a candle being lit, and the ritual and purpose for that candle.
Here are some articles that have helped me in the past few weeks when I think about how to approach what I see happening on the news and in my community.
Last week, I posted a version of an article that I wrote for the Hamline Church newsletter in December. The topic was being a Godbearer in Advent, on pausing to make room to be an incarnation of God in our daily lives. This idea is inspired by The Godbearing Life, by youth ministry extraordinaire Kenda Creasy Dean.
Now, though, as I think more about it, and as we approach the third week of Advent, there’s more to be said.
Being a Godbearer is making space for God to enter into the world through us. Now more so than ever, I think, with the rage and outcry over the grand jury decisions in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, we are called to make space for a new thing to happen in us.
Because I work with young people, I have the privilege of never taking anything for granted—even church. I work with people at that stage of life when they are just figuring out who they are and who they want to become, and nothing is sacrosanct when you’re trying to figure out the world.
Here’s the sermon I preached on 11/9 at Hamline Church! I preached on The Prodigal Son, which is Luke 15:11-32.
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Incase you haven’t noticed, it’s the second Sunday of Stewardship Month here at Hamline Church. Stewardship month is a time when we intentionally bring the topic of money into the worship service. We do this at this time every year, so that the issue of finances can be treated with the same discerning integrity and theological depth with which we treat the rest of our faith.
Additionally, this is also my first Sunday in the pulpit as your new Director of Youth and Family Ministry. My job here at Hamline Church is to provide support and programming for teenagers and their families, so that we all may be more spiritually enriched by the presence of young people in our congregation.
Mark DeVries in “Family Based Youth Ministry” says theres a crisis in the relationship between adults and teenagers–that teenagers are isolated and left to fend for themselves, and that is a crisis solely of our generation. Is that reflected in the popular literature for young people?
Photos and musing on my maiden voyage on Hercules, my new bike.
On Monday I packed everything I owned into this little Toyota and headed for the Twin Cities. It was an adventure. Sort of like driving a tiny truck. My side mirrors were all prepared so that I could see behind me. I had a car-top carrier full of all of my clothing lashed to the top of the car. It made a clickity click thwop sound the whole way there. (Luckily, though, it was only about as loud as a heavy rain.)
Here’s how I did it. (more…)
This is a goodbye letter to the city that has shaped and built me over the past three years, a place that I am so happy to call my second home. This is all about Chicago as I’ve experienced it these past three years.
Sermon for September 7, 2014 at The Clare
Proper 18 Year A
Ezekiel 33:7-11, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20
Click here to see the lectionary readings.
We have in our lessons today two concepts that may appear, at first, to be in contradiction with one another: love and conflict.
In his letter, Paul tells the church in Rome that it is now the moment for them to wake from sleep. They are called to love one another with a love that fulfills the law that they know from their Israelite heritage.
This image had been sitting in my 14″ sketchbook for months and months and months. I finally finished it. I used some of the metallic sharpies and played with some additional techniques that I din’t usually use. Just for fun. Enjoy! Buy a print of this image.
This image is another classroom doodle from the end of my coursework. I colored it after graduation, but most of it was inked in the last portion of my graduate degree. Just thinking, mostly. Just moving along. I played with the color scheme a little bit. I don’t usually use Read more…
Yes, the date on that says April. And yes, this is now August 30th, almost September. And yes, I have been really, really bad at scanning things. But, life happens. This is another classroom doodle that I came to really like. It looks sort of clock-like to me, so I Read more…