After a wonderful August away – both from the blog and, for most of the month, from home – I was struck again this past week at just how powerful beginnings are. Our kids began a new school year, our oldest beginning his high school career (yikes!). I also began a new term, whether I was ready or not. 🙂 The political conventions remind us that we are beginning – if not the political season, as we’ve been listening to campaign ads for months – at least the home stretch of the presidential race. Most of our congregations are also entertaining some new beginnings. No, it’s not the beginning of the church year – that’s Advent,...

I started this blog six months ago as something of an experiment to see if I (and by extension others) can discover how to write on matters of faith and daily life in a way that would be helpful and even (on a good day!) interesting to everyday Christians. Five years earlier I had led the team that developed WorkingPreacher.org, a site devoted to preaching resources. Since it’s launch it’s been a huge success, garnering well over a quarter million hits a month. But as I always tell folks, Working Preacher is the “low hanging fruit.” Preachers have to preach sermons each and so they know they can use good resources that are readily...