Worshiping as a guest
This past Sunday was part of a week of spring vacation. For obvious reasons, I don’t often get to experience worship at other congregations. Our family spent Sunday afternoon and evening in the cathedral of the southern Ohio forest looking for wildflowers, but in the morning I took Eve and…
Giving and withholding blessing
For the last six years I’ve served on the Ministerial Committee of Central District Conference. We oversee credentialing of pastors and chaplains, and give support to CDC pastors and our conference minister, Lois Kaufmann. Along with the other committees and the board of CDC, we meet twice a year…
Conversions
Easter Sunday is past, but the liturgical season of Easter is only beginning, running up through Pentecost Sunday, May 15. During this Easter season our worship theme will be “Conversions.” The plural is intentional. We’ll be looking at different conversion stories in scripture and in more recent history, beginning…
From Cuba with love
Cuba has been in the news this week, and our congregation recently received a gift from Cuba that will be on display at tonight’s Maundy Thursday service. In January CMCers Joe Mas and Linda Mercadante led a group of seminary students on a Cuba trip. Cuba is Joe’s place…
Peace?
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” — Luke 12:51 Say what, Jesus? Needless to say, this is not a verse championed by Mennonites. Do you think Jesus came to bring peace to the earth? “Yes!” is…
Allies or kin?
Two weeks ago I attended an event at MTSO (Methodist Theological School in Ohio) on Mass Incarceration. An African American woman deeply involved on the scene in Ferguson and other racial justice work voiced something I hadn’t heard before: A critique of the word “ally.” She felt that along with…
Midwives of justice
“…chosen as partners, midwives of justice, birthing new systems, lighting new lights.” From the song “God of the Bible,” Sing the Journey 27 This winter I’ve been a part of a Sunday school class studying the book of Exodus and its many intersections with the African American experience of slavery…
A Lenten fast
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and Pope Francis is calling for a fast from indifference: ““Indifference to our neighbor and to God represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry…
Bible study time
What does Jesus’ lament over the city of Jerusalem in Luke 13:31-35 have to do with racial relations in the US? What does Jesus’ wilderness temptations in Luke 4 have to do with white privilege? How does the prophet Isaiah’s proclamation that God is “about to do a new…
2015 Review
2015 is gone, but it’s worth remembering where we’ve been and what we’ve done in the past year. With fear and trembling that I may be leaving out something crucial, here are some of the highlights from the year, roughly in chronological order. Many of these events happen every year…
