Do We Want to Be Close to Jesus?  

Alan Alda, the United Church’s Statement on Ministry, sales training, photosynthesis, responses from people on the question: why I come to church, the reading from Mark… let’s see if they all hang together by the time I am finished. I asked people to share why they come to church and a number of you responded.…

Shaped by Words

We are halfway through ‘ordinary time,’ the Season after Pentecost. A time when we learn what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ. The gospel readings are full of questions. Questions are one of the ways the community of disciples seeks to understand Jesus and his ministry. We, too, seek to understand…

Shaped by Challenges

A woman enters the room, she has a shawl around her shoulders, she looks around and begins to speak: Jesus tried to have some privacy when he was in my hometown… But, you know what it is like when a famous person comes to town… even back then without Facebook and Twitter, we knew when…

Covenant & Cross  

Many years ago, when I started wearing a cross, perhaps at my confirmation at the age of 35, one of my brothers-in-law asked me why I would wear a Roman instrument of torture and death around my neck. I have to say that I had never thought of a cross in quite that manner and…