By Pastor Deb Stehlin Yesterday, a friend and I went to see the In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater production of “Make Believe Neighborhood.” It’s a masterful mash-up of the story of the radical Christian, Mr. Rogers, with vignettes of people who are making the Phillips neighborhood more, well, neighborly. That includes Pastors [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen “The mark of ashes is one of the few honest words in a culture of illusion.” So began an Ash Wednesday sermon I preached in the early 1990s. Perhaps, the words are even more pertinent today. We hear about fact checking, truth-o-meters, fake news. Well, this week we enter a season [...]
By Bob Hulteen My funny bone praises God for the dry (and sometimes not-so-dry) humor provided by The Onion, a news source that has its fingers on the pulse of American culture. Staff writers take dry news stories and bring them to life, much like the Valley of the Dry Bones. As a comic book [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen A few weeks ago, I was humbled to preach at the funeral of Erik Flom, the 25 year-old-son of Pastor Matt and Nora Flom. In learning more about his life, I found this story from a classmate. She wrote, “Erik was an indescribably magnetic person. People practically orbited around him. He [...]
By Rev. Craig Pederson I have a LinkedIn account, as many people do. I can’t remember when and why I set it up, but there must have been an invitation of some kind, or an article I wanted to read, that required me to set up a user profile. Now, I’ve given LinkedIn enough information [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen “It was during a time of personal prayer and fasting that I received the news I would play the part of King in the movie Selma,” David Oyelowo told the crowd gathered for the Annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast. It seemed to him that God had called him for this [...]
A colleague stirred her coffee and mused, “I wonder how the new tax law will impact how my people give to the church next year?” She is curious, because the standard deduction has roughly doubled for all filers. (Important resources are available to explain the impact of this tax change.) It’s expected that fewer people [...]
By Emilie Bouvier Okay, so I love waiting, I really do. There’s something about the practice and ritual of waiting that feeds the soul. But I’m also really anxious to dig into the reality that were all waiting for – the incarnation, God born among us. So, I’m going to skip ahead a little and [...]
By Bob Hulteen “Wait. Just wait.” The luminous blaze bouncing off the shiny red ornaments on a Christmas tree adorned with spray-can snow was too enticing. Homemade bows encircled the boxes adorned in green, red, and yellow, filling the space under the tree. I longed to "free" the treasures that awaited by a slow, methodical [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen The garment I will choose for Mary will be deep blue – blue like the ocean, like the endless night sky. Enough of this pale blue – as if the only thing that matters was that she was a virgin, meek and mild, pale and fading from view. No, we will [...]
