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Recently a grandmother told me how much her fourth grade granddaughter already loves a new three-year-old in our congregation. Their family just started visiting, and when the children, all ages, come together for to play and draw and wonder about the scripture readings, the little girl sings her own song about how much she loves Jesus. They are making a connection, beginning a relationship, not based on being in the same grade, but based on being in the same body of Christ.

Politi's account reveals much of what happened among the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on those days in March 2013.

Jesus sends his disciples out “like lambs in the midst of wolves.” We live in a time when intimacy is erased, privacy laughable, rhetoric rude and rusty. The notion of going out as lambs to wolves is apt, even if the wolves and lambs may be interchangeable.

When I parked the minivan in the church lot, it still sounded like the type of horror we have had no choice but to become stoic about: 20 dead in a bar, as many more wounded, a dead shooter and a thicket of questions. By the time I returned it had become something different.

I posted my own brief prayer on Facebook Sunday after learning of the shooting in Orlando, and I’ve shared a few posts from others that moved or touched me. But I confess that I’m a bit tired of well-crafted prayers proliferating on my social media pages. At some point it starts to feel like a prayer competition. No doubt most of these prayers are heartfelt and helpful to many, but I’ve seen so many of them in recent years. At the same time that thoughts and prayers have begun to grate on me, I am far beyond that with American society.

Yes, we’re surrounded by ubiquitous light, but its mysteries have not been wholly conquered.

It's up to pastors to remind each other to talk to people instead of about them.

Matt talks with Liz Goodman, minister of the United Church of Christ in Monterey, Massachusetts, about the value of ferocity in relationships, being perceived by small-town folks as provocative, and the freedom that comes from being in a pulpit for 15 years.

My wife and I are in Maine for a memorial service celebrating the life of the grandfather of my children, my beloved father-in-law from the first go-around. The collection of his children and grandchildren, and his wife’s clan of three generations, includes a handful of other LGBTQ people. It’s been a wonderful experience, living into the way we’ve all worked so hard to make our two household-family work for 20 years now.

There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The administration has to somehow prioritize who is slated for deportation.

Growing up it was in the kitchen every Sunday where I would witness the most frenetic, clamorous work of our church community.

Max Porter’s debut novel, which hovers between poetry and prose, illustrates the ways in which grief can be simultaneously violent and gentle.

A fast-growing number of people do not have a religious first language. And many churches don't seem eager to connect with them.

A few years ago, I was asked how long I had been a pastor. I forget how long it was precisely, but it must have been somewhere in the window of two to three years. I told my questioner this and the response was darkly humorous: “Oh, so long enough to disappoint some people.” Indeed. I was having a conversation with a friend recently about the broad strokes of our city’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis.