Reasons I Stay…

Days like today, I think about the denomination of The United Methodist Church, and why I’m a part of it. Days that follow trials and verdicts, personal vendetta turned to personhood- and livelihood- stripping arguments and actions make it hard to remember. There’s beautiful theology, and a structure that is imperfect but has room for…

Faith and Fallacies

My Staff Parish Relations Committee and I worked on our evaluation form last night. We dutifully and fruitfully prayed about and discussed the sense of living into Jesus the vine, and then engaged the questions on the sheet. The first one gave us trouble. We felt like the wires were a little crossed. ... Not…

Vital Signs – an alternative report

As I wrote yesterday, I really struggled with trying to input goals for my congregation in the Vital Congregations website. Part of my struggle arises because I do not think that this tool measures the right things and for the right reasons, but the biggest challenge arises because our tradition is one of storytelling, relationship,…

Counting the Unaccountable

It's that glorious time of year when United Methodist Churches hunt down, compile, and report their statistics for the year. For a growing number of us, this is now part of a larger system of reporting of statistics year round, designed to help us measure our churches' "Vital Signs" (part of the Vital Congregations program).…

Pastors only work on Sundays, right?

Today was one of those days. One of those wonderful, glorious days when it may have looked like I did very little to edit a church bulletin or craft a brilliant sermon, but the church and the people of God were foremost on my mind. I began the day with a meeting in Barre (next…

I have, like, the best job ever.

I really do enjoy my job. It amazes me sometimes. Sure, it's difficult, and draining and chellenging some days. Sure, there are times when it seems like many of my days are filled with finding (and losing) paperwork, looking for prayers to go with a particular theme, and attending marathon meetings. But around that stuff,…

Warning: Pastor on the Loose!

Maybe a church or two on the loose, too! I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because they ordained me and now I've got an extra shot of the Spirit in me or something. Maybe it's because I took a little time off over the past couple of weeks and got more rejuvenated than…

Parting thoughts

I'm off to Troy Annual Conference, where I'm sure I'll spend plenty of time blogging, tweeting, updating facebook status, and oh yeah doing exciting things like legislation and preaching to a huge audience and getting ordained. I love conference. But before I go, this happy thought from tonight's Finance Committee portion of our Church Council/Finance…

Split Personality

Sorry, gentle readers, about the black hole of post-Christmas, post-family-crisis time I slipped into. Thanks for tuning back in. Christmas Eve services at my two churches were special, each in their own way. The sermon was the same, and a lot of the hymns were good old standby Christmas hymns, and each ended with candle-lighting…

Circuit Rider: Fail.

Apparently, it takes some practice to get your head around serving two churches at once. Last week, I had to drive to church B and get an extra robe before I went to church A for the first service and then back to church B. That was nothing. This week, I forgot the bulletins for…