A funny thing happened to me last week.  I went to a meeting.  I didn’t log into a meeting.  I went there.  I put on long pants (not my favorite part), drove to the church, small talked then got to the purpose of our time together.  An hour later I was back in my car […]

In the last week the churches of the East Ohio Annual Conference have scrambled to figure out how to live stream their worship services.  Some have full-blown Sunday morning productions, others are pastors in front of their cell phones offering a message and a prayer. And once they got that figured out by Sunday, they […]

I recently read a book that should be required reading for any good Methonerd like myself.  Reverend Will Cantrell has written Unafraid and Unashamed:  Facing the Future of United Methodism.  It’s a really, really good book discussing the human sexuality issue in the church. At just 150 or so pages it’s a fairly quick read […]

I often begin my sermon for stewardship Sunday by saying that it’s my favorite day of the church year, the day that the congregation decides what kind of church it chooses to be next year:  a church of scarcity or a church of abundance.  It’s not about the money, it’s about the ministry that will […]

Photo Credit: Sue Zakovec, East Ohio Annual Conference In yesterday’s post I lamented the protests I had seen the day before.  They were, I wrote, unnecessary because General Conference bends over backward to make sure everyone has a chance to have their voice heard. In a world of social media I had enough “likes” and […]

I had dinner last night with some other members of the East Ohio delegation after we all had a busy and at times frantic day in committees trying to get through our legislation.  They had heard the news about the Trust Clause but they all wanted to know the answer to the same question:  what […]

In a marketing email I received last week, I read the following: Two people pass a beggar on the street. One sees a lazy bum and feels indignant. The other sees a victim of circumstance and feels compassion. Same beggar, same street, different perception.  To each relationship we bring a lifetime of our own experiences, values, […]

The Board of Directors at the Foundation has spent the last year in a strategic planning process.  We are a much different organization than when I got here seven years ago and we were trying to get a handle on what exactly our role should be. My elevator speech has always been that the Foundation […]

I had a wonderful conversation with an equally wonderful woman a couple of weeks ago.  She has done a great deal of mission work in the last several decades, some here in the U.S. and much of it internationally.  The conversation wound around to accountability in the missions field. Accountability is a big word in […]

Last night I met with a local church’s Finance Committee.  They spent a few minutes going over the financials, discussing the pluses and the minuses.  They they got to me to talk stewardship. Here’s the problem.  It was the Finance Committee.  They had just looked at financial statements.  And they wanted to talk about money.  […]