I got a phone call at one of my churches this week. “Are you the church with the 'all are welcome' sign out front?” the caller asked. “The one that says ‘All are welcome in this place’  with the rainbow?” I replied cheerfully. “Yes! That’s us!” 🌈 There was a pause. The kind of pause where your spirit quietly whispers, Here we go. “Does that mean… everyone?” “Yes,” I said. “Jesus is pretty clear that all are welcome into relationship with God.” Another pause. Longer this time

An AI generated epic toy battle! Every so often, when I drive down 13th Street heading toward downtown Salem, Oregon, a neighboring city, I pass a house with a fenced yard that faces the street. Inside the yard are large Transformers, action figures, and dolls. Every time I pass by, they’re in different positions—locked in new poses, new standoffs, new imagined clashes. It’s clear the children who live there are staging an epic battle. Good versus evil. Heroes and villains. T

Our kids are watching us in this moment. Today is Epiphany—January 6—the day the church proclaims that God pulls back the curtain. Epiphany is about revelation: light breaking through, truth made visible, God showing up in places that are shadowed, dreary, and hate-filled. It is the season when we dare to say that light still shines, even when the world feels dangerous and unclear. But Epiphany has always carried tension. Entangled in that story of starlight and revelation is

The new year always arrives with a kind of quiet insistence. It doesn’t knock loudly like a holiday or demand attention the way a birthday does. It simply shows up, standing there in the doorway of our lives, asking us to notice what has been carried forward and what might be ready to be folded differently. For me, this noticing often begins in the most ordinary of places: the laundry room. Laundry has a way of marking time. Loads come and go with the rhythm of weeks and seas

Every so often I hear — explicitly or implicitly — that women are “opting out,” “slowing down,” or somehow losing ambition, especially when it comes to their jobs. As if we all just collectively decided one day that striving was overrated and naps were the new corner office. Across workplaces and ministry contexts, women continue to shoulder disproportionate burdens, contributing extraordinary labor that too often goes unseen and unrewarded. A recent Women in the Workplace re

There is a list every December. It’s long, ambitious, and full of good intentions. It holds the things that should  happen, the things that would make Christmas feel just right if I could only check every box. And every year, somewhere between Advent hope and Christmas Eve exhaustion, I am reminded that not everything on the list is meant to be finished. The essentials get done. Most of the teacher gifts did get done, and that feels like a small miracle in itself. Worship is

Families waiting to visit with the one and only Santa Clause at Silverton UMC. Advent always begins with waiting, but I’m not sure I ever realize how much waiting we actually do this time of year until we’re deep into it. For our family, these early days of Advent in our family have been full—full of the usual traditions, the yearly rhythms we’ve come to love, the little markers that tell us Christmas is on its way. We’ve been selling Christmas trees at my son’s school tree f