I am the lead pastor at People's United Methodist Church in the Wisconsin Conference of The United Methodist Church, husband of my beautiful wife, Barbara, dad to my fantastic son, Josh and his wife Caroline, step-dad to my phenomenal son, Greg, his wife Hannah and our fabulous/glorious/perfect granddaughter Evie, author of seventeen books on spirituality, stewardship, congregational development, research, and spiritual gifts discovery, and an advocate for a more loving, inclusive church for the 21st century and beyond.
Growing up, fruit was often the core component of dessert after our meals. My grandmother tended a wonderful orchard, full of luscious delights — crisp, sweet apples; juicy pears, plump cherries, amazing berries, grapes swelled to bursting. We supplemented Midwestern fare with citrus fruits and bananas. Fruit was a sweet […]
I know I am in the minority, but in a culture crazed for Christmas and Easter, my two favorite church holy-days are Pentecost and Maundy Thursday. I’ll get to Pentecost in about six weeks, but for now I want to think about what makes Maundy Thursday so significant for me. […]
Like many things in our modern culture, Holy Week has become a muddled grey paste of a religious experience. Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter all get jumbled up together in an atheological hodge-podge that leaves the veteran confused and the novitiate clueless. I have already sung, […]
When will we get tired of playing the numbers game? We have been misled to believe that the answer to all the problems of The United Methodist Church is more people. We don’t care about who these people are or whether they will benefit from being United Methodists — we […]
There is an unnecessary tragedy associated with our current obsessive-compulsive fixation on death, decay and decline. The tragedy is that we are living a lie. We are walking by sight, not by faith. We are choosing to accept darkness as truth, and in so doing we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. […]
I watched some of the Global Leadership Summit videos over the weekend and have to admit they depressed me. It felt like another missed opportunity. Hopeful rhetoric infuses a blurry and misdirected vision for a limited and inwardly focused future. It is all about us — and not all of […]
You know what The United Methodist Church needs? A Day of Atonement. A good old-fashioned nation-wide, denomination-deep day of saying “I Am Sorry!” — to God, to each other, and to ourselves. For a vast number of reasons, we United Methodists have seemingly lost the capacity to apologize, to humble, […]
We’ve got a problem. We don’t know who we are. We have become such an interesting hodge-podge of new and old Christians from such varied backgrounds as Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Reformed, New Age, Independent-Evangelical, Assemblies of God, UCC, UUC, MOUSE as well as UMC and all […]
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord – has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:12-13, NRSV) For a very short […]
The answer to the question, “what’s wrong with us?” is that we are fixated on the question “what’s wrong with us?” Doom, gloom, decline, conflict, controversy, division, discord — all addressed with a cheery irrational rah-rah attitude. National events that bludgeon participants with “Death Tsunami’s” and calls to action that […]
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