pastoral leadership

There's a subtext to lots of sermons I hear, and some I preach: Discomfort is avoidable. Here's my formula. It's the promise of all bogus religion.

When it comes to equal pay for women, the church should do better than employers generally, not worse.

I believe that my leadership has been most effective when I know who's giving what to the church.

The mainline has long congratulated itself for being prophetic because it's good at voting for progressive agendas. But change happens at the local level.

Most of us have seen this coming for a decade, but it’s still startling to read the headlines in the Atlantic: "The Vanishing of Middle Class Clergy."

None of this is news. We know pastors who feed their children with food stamps.

Some ask why a pastor would pass up a chance to draw a young couple into the church. But perhaps that's the wrong question. 

To Eugene Peterson, a church is not a demarcated zone of idealized community. The potential for misdirection and distraction abounds.

Following doesn't command the interest that leading does. But following is crucial.