Your free, at-home Lenten retreat: Exhale
We work hard to create an environment so that those we serve enter into a holy and sacred season of fasting, reflection, and prayer. And what about you?
We have created an environment for you with this free, at-home Lenten retreat. It includes quotations, poetry, Lectio Divina, and questions for reflection—with suggestions for three schedules to suit your schedule of ninety minutes, three hours, or six. By the end, you will have exhaled your concerns about what is to come, and be held in the present, liminal moment between breaths: our place of rest within the Holy.
How to Make the Unbelievable Believable
How do we make God's invitation to the Promised Land—to freedom, to abundantly shared mercy, to love and justice—worth the pain of change? Especially when we're in the process of moving toward God as much as our parishioners are?
A 3-Step Review to Preach More Compellingly and Joyfully This Year (& All Year)!
Complete this 3-step review to preach more compellingly and joyfully this year (& all year)!
Cultivating Patience (A Free, At-Home Retreat)
However much we wish the the thorn in our sides would just go away, wishing will not bring the desired effect. Moreover, acting out our impatience is only adding thorns to others' sides, increasing their suffering. We could all use more patience—right now. From whence is it to come?
This free, at-home retreat is intended to help
God grant us serenity
The Serenity Prayer brings us into the present; reframes our worries, angst, and stress; right-sizes our power; and returns us to the grace of God that can help us in this moment.
I offer it this Election Day in the United States as a spiritual practice for preachers this week—and to spark inspiration for preaching this Sunday.
Ditch Fear. Seed hope.
Due to the sheer repetition of circling our gaze between nails, soldiers, and oppressor, our fear mushrooms until we believe that death is stronger than God. Jesus himself is always there to remind us of the truth, but there is another figure we can look to as a guide in restoring our faith in God alone: Mary Magdalene.
Do You Believe the Sermons You Preach?
We’re not writing sermons to get a job done. Nor are we looking for a topic the same way we do for a term paper. Instead, having engaged the text prayerfully—vulnerable and open to the Holy Spirit—we have been changed. We encountered the living God, and that encounter transforms us. A sermon, then, serves as a public declaration of faith: yours.
Be Fed That You May Feed
Consider how we feed people with the Word week in and week out:
- Sermons
- Bible studies
- Prayers
When we're only using the Word as a necessary tool for ministry, yes, we get fed on the side. But we don't eat the main course. When we don't sit at the banquet table and feast daily ourselves, we slowly starve ourselves.
We know we're starving when:
- Preaching becomes a test of strength, willpower, and adrenaline.
- Preaching doesn't give us life, it drains it.
- Preaching hangs over our heads all week.