When Life Together is Hard: Thanksgivings
The history of the Thanksgiving holiday is what you might call… complicated. It’s complicated like most human-declared events are, layered in different pers...
When Life Together is Hard: Institutions
“Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people. Close the doors and hear them pray. Open the doors, they all walk away.”&...
When Life Together is Hard: Appearances
As the story goes, a little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Swedish man and keeps staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, ‘Pardo...
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...
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...
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: 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...
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...
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...