Every now and then, a metaphor pops into my brain that’s just too good to ignore. I love cooking and baking competitions. Lately I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped and The Great British Bake off. Chopped is a frantic Food Network show where chefs are handed a mystery basket of ingredients. As I was watching Chopped the other day,  I thought: Oh my goodness… this is also pastoring. To be honest, for a fleeting moment, I thought this metaphor applied during COVID pastoring too

...ministry takes more than a balanced budget—it takes bold imagination, a little holy restlessness, and a willingness to try things that might seem unusual, risky, or even a little wild.

A pile. Here’s something that might not show up in a tidy Instagram square or make it into a catchy blog title: one of the biggest...

hank you for dreaming big, for trying even when you were scared, for loving deeply. Thank you for laying the foundation of the life I now live.

I wish I could go back and whisper something true to her: some of those dreams won’t come true—and that’s not a failure. That’s grace unfolding.

How long must the church wait before it joins the world that is spinning? I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately about midwives. Perhaps it's because a friend just had an adorable baby girl. I suppose part of the reason is that I am in my own transition time. I’ll post more about that later, but this theme of midwives keeps coming up for me. The theme of being a midwife in ministry isn't new. When I was at the Monastery of St. Gertrude many years ago for a clergy group m