Beating Writer’s Block
Pastors don’t just need to write, they have to write. Usually quite a bit of text, almost always regularly. Whether that’s writing out a manuscript for your sermon (which I don’t do), writing newsletter articles, or just composing emails, writing is something I have to do every day. So what happens when you can’t write? [...]
5 Ideas for Boosting Your Ministry
Pastors can be stubborn – I know I am! Yet most of us still recognize the need for growing and improving their ministries. At the Nebraska Synod‘s First Call Theological Education, Bishop deFreese asked us, “What resources do you need?” Here are five answers we gave, and some easy first steps to boost your ministry: [...]
Congregational Mission: rockin’
I posted an email to our congregation on our new church website. We’ve got exciting things going on in Holdrege! Oh, by the way, did I mention that the ELCA Worshipping Community of Holdrege has a new website? And, by the way, there’s a new community and children’s event getting started on October 12. It’s [...]
Launching the Holdrege Listening Campaign
This week, five regular people became intrepid adventurers, preparing to listen to the community. They’ll be contacting all kinds of people across the area – People who don’t belong to a church, and people who do, People who don’t look like us, and people who do, People who disagree with us, and people who agree, [...]
Little Red Book 2012 for Google Calendar
I heard on the ELCA Clergy Facebook group that some people were having trouble getting the Augsburg Fortress Little Red Appointment book to work on Google Calendar. Here are some instructions I hope will help: Visit the Little Red Book page and download the file for Google Calendar. This will put a “.csv” file on [...]
ELCA and the Ministry of Connectedness
I was standing in line at the Phelps County Fair waiting to get some BBQ sandwiches. When one couple standing nearby learned that I was the pastor of the new ELCA Lutheran church in Holdrege, NE, they had a few things to say to me. You see, they had been connected to the ELCA at [...]
Sing, Pray, Work
This morning over breakfast, my two-year-old daughter Anneliese told me that church is “where we sing and pray and work!” Not bad for two years old, huh? I want to unpack that a bit for the missional church: Sing: the missional church sings songs of joy and sorrow. It gets down in the mucky-muck((A technical [...]
Quick, blog something!
When your website address starts being included on things like bulletins and weekly church emails, you quickly become acutely aware of how infrequently it has been updated. So, without further ado, here is the video of my sermon for Sunday, July 3. This was my first Sunday with the ELCA Worshiping Community of Holdrege, Nebraska.