Sometimes I genuinely wonder what people actually hear when I preach. Not what I say . Not what I carefully pray over, study, write, revise, and deliver. What people hear . Do they hear one word they don’t like and then mentally check out for the remaining fifteen minutes? Do they grab onto a phrase, assume they know where I’m going, and stop listening before I even get there? I suspect that happens more often than we’d like to admit. Last week, I was chatting with a congrega

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

Hi, moms. I see you. You’re trying to get your family out the door on a Sunday morning — socks that mostly match (optional), a snack bag for the toddler, a coloring book for the preschooler, and enough caffeine to survive an hour of “shhhh” whispers and Goldfish crumbs in the pews. You’re juggling spilled milk, missing shoes, and that one kid who suddenly can’t find their other shoe even though they were just wearing it. You’re not just looking for a church to attend — you’re

Not long ago, someone asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Why don’t preachers preach from the Bible anymore?” I’ll admit, I was taken aback. My first instinct was to laugh — not in a dismissive way, but in surprise. Because as far as I know, I do preach from the Bible. Every week, in fact. That’s literally where I begin. So, I took a breath and asked this person to tell me more — to unpack what they meant. I got curious. They weren’t able to fully articulate t

This was my late 1980's dream bag! When I was a girl, there was an older kid on my bus who teased me relentlessly. Every afternoon, it was the same routine. I carried a bright red bag my mom had made for me — handmade with love, but shaped, unfortunately, like a bright red pizza box carying bag. I had wanted a GAP tote bag like everyone else. Instead, I got laughter. Kids called me “pizza face,” which cut even deeper because, on top of everything else, I was battling teenage

A bright orange guitar pick with Gsus Saves on it. My office manager handed me this guitar pick earlier this week — bright orange, with the words “Gsus Saves” and a guitar chord chart printed right on it. I laughed out loud at first. It’s clever, right? A pun that strums right at the intersection of faith and music. But the longer I held it in my hand, the more I realized — there’s actually a little theology in this tiny triangle of plastic. On one side, there’s the Gsus chor

What does Christian perfection REALLY mean? As a United Methodist clergyperson, I have a love-hate relationship with the word perfection....