Sometimes I just want it to stop. Talk of COVID, looting, brutality. I lose my way. I become convinced that this “new normal” is real life. Then I meet an 87-year-old who talks of living through polio, diphtheria, Vietnam protests and yet is still enchanted with life....
But the Gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.”...
In these challenging, difficult times [pandemic], we are discovering a wisdom that we needed all along, and that wisdom is that we are all connected. We are not separate. We used to think that we caught diseases as individuals: "I'm sick; you're not." But now we...
Meals are the settings in which families rehearse their stories, repeatedly trading tales and histories, realizing afresh what it means to be a Webber, a Clapp, or whomever. Without memory there is no identity or vision and so no personhood. The Eucharist is the...
The time of wondering whether you’ve truly been called to the ministry is over. The challenge is to know when God is calling and not the voice or ego or the expectations of family and friends. from commencement address to Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond...