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...

We’re spending this week at Outlaw Ranch Lutheran Camp, located in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. I’ve been fortunate that over the years I’ve been invited to teach at a number of our summer church camps and always look forward to spending time with family and with friends old and new learning about and worshiping God in the beauty of God’s creation. In fact, let me say that a little more forcefully. I don’t just look forward to this time, I long for it, as I’ve come to have a tremendous appreciation for what our summer camps do for our youth and families and, indeed, for the whole church. The Lutheran Church of which...

I’m a huge fan of the Christian concept of vocation: that God calls each and all of us to serve God by serving our neighbor in whatever roles we may have. So whether you’re working or volunteering or a parent or sibling or student or friend or citizen – whatever role you have you can serve God by serving others. I’m attracted to this idea because it elevates our daily work and effort. In the middle ages, Christian lives within a spiritual hierarchy. Yes, it was good to be a mother or father or bricklayer or whatever. But it was better to be a priest and even better to be a monk, and so forth. One of the things Martin Luther protested...