Until a More Opportune Time

Until a More Opportune Time

My stepfather, who is closing hard on his 90th birthday, informed me with great glee that he had been served a jumbo, juicy, jelly donut with his breakfast yesterday morning. I explained that the occasion was sometimes known as Fat Tuesday and went on to connect it with Ash Wednesday, reminding him that people in Europe often used up their cooking fat on the day before Lent, the better to prepare for the culinary leanness of the season. Which explanation he accepted, whereupon he laughed and said: “I think we should have Fat Tuesday every Tuesday.”

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The Second From the Last Hurrah

The Second From the Last Hurrah

If you were present at last Tuesday’s meeting of our Administrative Council, you heard me talk about a strange little phrase, “Paying the rent.” Which, when I use it, has nothing to do with dollars that are mailed to the landlord, but everything to do with expectations that are satisfied for the congregation. “Paying the rent,” in this instance, has to do with preachers and the degree to which they are willing (or unwilling) to tailor the work they do to the tasks the congregation wants to have done.

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A Defiant Response to a Dangerous Theology: Does God Desire to Wipe Us Out?

A Defiant Response to a Dangerous Theology: Does God Desire to Wipe Us Out?

Illinois. Michigan. New York. Massachusetts. The rest of New England and the northeastern seaboard. Buffeted by snow. Buried in snow. Blitzed with a blizzard of snow. It is clear that God is venting his wrath and visiting his payback upon the blue states. If, at the last minute, the storm were to miraculously bypass Ohio, there are some of you….or a few of you….well, maybe two or three of you….who might actually believe that.

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A Pithy Parable for Passive-Aggressive People

A Pithy Parable for Passive-Aggressive People

When I was beginning my ministry, one of the great names in Methodist preaching was that of Dwight Large. Dwight finished his career in the pulpit of Central Church, Detroit, following stints in other downtown pulpits in Kalamazoo, Lansing, and Ann Arbor.

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