Love Continues
As the story goes, one day, a man named Abraham invited a stranger to his tent for a meal. When grace was being said, the man began to curse God, declaring he c...
How Will I Know? By the Love
If you were hearing the gospel reading for today and wondering to yourself, “didn’t we just hear this text about a month ago on Maundy Thursday?,” well, y...
The Good Life: Beloved
Among the top 25 most-watched TED talks ever is one called “what makes a good life?”1 In it, researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger reflects on the Ha...
Leaving Home: Underwater
Everything looks different underwater. Distended, a bit. Shiny and blurry all at once. Scientists tell us “not only do underwater objects appear larger and cl...
Prepare Him Room When Plans Change
It was a few days before Christmas on a day like today, days that parents start running through all their tricks to keep young children occupied, when young Meg...
Homecoming
“There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home” She clicks the heels of those ruby slippers. You know the story &...
Homemaking
You might be wondering, isn’t this a text we normally read at Christmas, and not October? Yes, you’d be right! Every year in our Christmas Lessons and Carol...
Fully Clothed
Asking for a show of hands among the students in the room – how many of you are glad to be back to school? (Parents, I won’t ask you how many of you are gla...
Fully Alive
Ten years ago this summer, Josh, Liam, Annabelle, and I loaded up our cars and headed southeast to plant our lives with you, right here in Winston-Salem. But be...
Loosed!
Loosed! You know the story, this wild Pentecost narrative, one of breath and fire and tongues, one of innumerable languages and proclamation and hearing, one wh...
The Good Life: Caught
It’s a real gift as a pastor’s kid-turned-pastor to have my pastor parents here in Winston-Salem, and icing on the cake when my dad teaches a class I get to...
The Good Life: Proclaimed
We’re nearing the five year anniversary of one of the most ubiquitous phrases used by the modern American. No, I’m not talking about “we’re living in un...
The Good Life: Delighted
I’m going to let you in on a pastor secret. Every pastor has a wild wedding story. We do. We file them away next to the extra splashy baptism stories and the ...
When Life Together Is Hard: Essentials
Every year on All Saints Sunday, I’m struck again by the profound gift and challenge of life together. I see in your faces the grief you’ve experienced as y...
Church is for Life Together
Think with me for a minute of the groups of which you’ve been a part. Maybe a sports team, a company staff, a choir, a neighborhood association. Maybe a polit...
What is Church For?
I’ve told you before the story from Dr. Fred Craddock, the late pastor and storyteller, who shared about the first church he pastored....
Soul Food: Giving Up a Shelf-Stable Faith
A sweet Italian grandmother once was adjusting to her surroundings in her new American home. ...
Soul Food: The World’s First Pot-Luck
Perhaps something you should know about your pastor is that among the things in this world that draw my highest religious devotion most are, well, peaches. I am...
Defying Norms: Insider/Outsider
When the Russian-Finnish border was being redrawn, the old story goes, a farmer was told that the boundary line passed right through the middle of his land...
Coming to Ourselves
Thank you, Emily, for the warm welcome. And thank you to my mom and dad for thinking that this was a good idea. It’s an honor, and frankly a...
Tender Care: A Spiritual Detox
If you’ve been following along for these Epiphany weeks, you know we’re spending time with the Gospel of Mark. The most abrupt and fast-paced of all the gos...
Tender Care: Living Under Water
As the scene opens, Pete, Delmar, and Everett are seated around a campfire: hungry, scared, and on the run. They’re outlaws you see, having barely escaped a M...
Christmas Eve Worship: For Good News of Great Joy
Just the other day, I was checking out in the line at Target with what I was sure was the last Christmas present I’d need to buy (spoiler alert, it wasn’t!)...
Attending Church: Presence
Cartoonist and comedian Seth MacFarlane, creator of “The Family Guy” show, was interviewed a dozen years ago on NPR’s Fresh Air about a new album he had c...
Then and Now: Boundaries (The Story of Adam and Eve)
Have you read the story called The Giving Tree? You know this one, don’t you – the story that poet Shel Silverstein gave us about the tree who loved the lit...
The Resurrection Way of Us
You’ve heard me tell pastor Tom Long’s story, where, as the brand new pastor of a small church, he decided to try out a new teaching opportunity — a pasto...
The Resurrection Way that Abides
“I love you, now leave me alone.” That’s the title of an article you can find from this week’s New York Times, subtitled: “What Friendship Means to an...
Lessons Along the Way: On a Moral Imagination
As the story goes, Mullah Nasrudden once found a diamond by the roadside. Muslim law dictated that finders became keepers only if they first announced their fin...