The Christian Century

How do we solve the gender gap in ministry? With women outnumbering men in seminaries today, how we do break that stained glass ceiling? Our current approach in the Presbyterian Church is to require churches, when looking for a pastor, to interview at least one female candidate. The thinking is, of the final three or four candidates, there would be a woman in the mix, and perhaps even churches with an unspoken default of pastor=male might be sufficiently moved to think outside the box. Not that every church will follow that up with a call to that woman, of course. This is mysterious Holy Spirit stuff, not to mention that there are women pastors who aren’t all that. But churches should at least look. Do you think this helps?

1. According to the gospels, Jesus talked about money and possessions frequently. It seems like it is worthy of more of church leaders’ attention than we give it in our preaching and teaching. 2. People have to deal with money every day. We need to provide more spiritual support for them in their daily lives with money.

It happened again today.  I drove up to one of my favorite cafes in a nearby town and was shocked to find it closed.  I don’t mean closed today.  I mean closed forever.  But they knew me there!  They knew I liked those vanilla creamers and my eggs poached hard!  I sat with the engine running, hungry and caffeine-deprived, wondering where I would go for breakfast.  Why didn’t they warn me?  I would have come by to say good-bye.

There is salvation in no one else. And he has other sheep that do not belong to this fold.

Anthony Robinson said it well in a recent Stillspeaking devotional. Maybe the future of the church is a lot simpler than it is today.  Breaking bread, prayers, learning about the word and caring for the lost are the simple acts Jesus led his little band to engage in.

It’s the second movement of Leonard Bernstein’s choral work, Chichester Psalms. A boy soprano (or a countertenor), in the “role” of the shepherd boy, David, sings in Hebrew the opening verses of Psalm 23. He is accompanied–sparingly, fittingly–by the harp. The first several measures are tender but not tentative; filled with sentiment, but without sentimentality (this per Bernstein’s instructions). When the women’s voices take over the text at גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת . . . (Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .) there’s an ethereal echo-canon effect. This part of the movement, when executed well, is something sublime.