I am working with some pastors in NW Iowa on preaching. They are largely from the Reformed tradition — Christian Reformed Church, The Reformed Church in America, and their various Reformed cousins — and have been meeting together for a couple of years with the help of a Lilly Endowment grant to support preachers administered by Calving Seminary‘s Center for Excellence in Preaching. Apparently they stumbled upon my book, Preaching at the Crossroads: How the World-and Our Preaching-Is Changing (cool)…and liked it (very cool)…enough to invite me to conversation (beyond cool! 🙂 ). We haven’t just talked...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Come and see. Think, for a moment, about the effect of those words might have on you were you to hear them in an everyday context. Would they generate a certain sense of excitement about whatever it might be you were being invited to witness? Perhaps curiosity? Or maybe gratitude that someone thought to include you? Come and see. The words are both simple and warm, issuing an invitation not only to see something, but also to join a community. To come along and be part of something. Come and see. These words, this invitation, form the heart not simply of this opening scene but much of John’s Gospel. John’s story...

I’m at Georgetown College in Kentucky, today, meeting with a group of pastors to talk about practices to grow congregations and ministry. I do that kind of thing a lot. What’s different this time is that Georgetown is a Baptist College. So you might wonder why I was invited. Well, because Georgetown in a Baptist College that has, over the years, come to partner with Episcopalians and members of the Disciples of Christ and Methodists and other traditions in the Lexington area. And when one of the Baptist professors at Georgetown asked one of his Episcopal colleagues whom her community would like to hear from, she suggested me. I’m here,...

This past week while traveling, I started reading James Carroll’s Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age. While I spend most of my time on planes writing – emails, mostly, occasionally a post, not nearly enough just writing – I like to have a book with me during takeoff and landing, those times when “laptop computers must be shut.” Carroll, NY Times bestselling author of Constantine’s Sword picks up in this book his exploration of the relationship between Christians and Jews. But this time it’s less historical investigation than it is personal memoir combined with some biblical study...

I love words. Working with them, sharing my thoughts through them with others, receiving ideas and inspiration from others through them. Words are powerful. And I have to confess that, because I love words, I sometimes think I have to protect them. That is, I will admit that from time to time I get frustrated by made-up words, by what is often called a neologism (literally, “a new word”). For instance, and taking an example from my own line of work, I kind of despise the word “missional.” Even though I often use it. But it bothers me. There’s an inelegance to “missional,” I would argue, that is unnecessary and unhelpful, so why...