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.
My Lenten reflections this year pull me to my core beliefs and values — why do I think, believe, and feel the way I do about God, my self and others? What is it that I truly believe is God’s will for my own life as well as this beast […]
I find that I am tired of defending the position that Christians should be advocates for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, and the taken-advantage-of. For me, this is a no brainer. But I must confess that I err on the side of care for the underdog at the expense […]
Picture, if you will, a small, rural congregation. The average age in the church is early 60s. The weekly worship attendance is approximately 50, and there is one nine-year-old who comes about once every three weeks. She is the whole Sunday school. The community is a church-going community — about […]
Going through some files, I came upon a folder of interview notes from the UM Seeker Study I conducted almost a decade ago. There is a wondrous and troubling paradox in the old UMC these days when it comes to young people: we say we want to reach young people […]
Happy Lent. An odd wish, a contradiction in terms, a not-so-subtle missing the point, but then we all know the story ends with bunnies and chickies and chocolate, so we shouldn’t get too excited. Our church is way too quick to get to Easter. Forty days in the wilderness, Maundy […]
It has been an interesting few weeks here in Wisconsin — making the national news almost daily due to our governor, Scott Walker, and his crusade to eliminate collective bargaining rights as a cost-cutting measure to help balance the budget. There is no doubt that it would produce a short-term […]
A fascinating occurrence. I reported an incident that happened in another conference in an article entitled Guerilla Christianity, and I have had four separate responses from other United Methodist Churches believing that I was talking about them! Obviously, what happened in the incident reported struck a chord with these other […]
How we see ourselves is often very different from how others see us. In my “former life” doing research for The United Methodist Church, I often went to “secular” audiences to get their impressions and opinions about our church. It was very easy to do, because my office was half […]
“Why were we forced to speak nicely to one another? Why couldn’t we just be honest?” an agitated woman accosted me. “You have no right to censor us. You make rules that we can’t accuse or blame or address people directly. That’s not fair.” This woman was furious that I […]
Reading a recent post by sportswriter Rick Reilly (passed on to me by my son Josh) about a young female wrestler, Cassy Herkelman, from Iowa who lost focus and was defeated in the state finals because a young evangelical Christian, Joel Northrup, forfeited an earlier match to her due to his conviction […]
United Methodeviations 