This coming Thursday and Friday, Elder Doug Jenkins and I will be in Minneapolis for something called the Gathering of the Fellowship of Presbyterians. The Fellowship is a barely organized organization.  As the story is told, a small group of large church Presbyterian pastors gathered early this year to discuss ways that our PCUSA denomination might find new ways to be a community of like-minded, Christ-centered congregations, supporting and encouraging one another in the training and discipline of our leaders and in that kind of mission that we best do together, in other words, a new way of doing the old things that mark us as being Presbyterian. They said they saw a denomination that is deathly ill and that they were tired of watching it die a slow death. Continue reading →

The lead article in last Sunday’s New York Times Sunday Review section has generated conversations and comments that have continued far longer than the usual Monday morning chatter of those who pay attention to such things.  “What Happened to Obama?” is worth reading. If you don’t like politics, it’s still worth reading. If you are a partisan of the President and don’t like to hear him being dissed, it’s still worth reading. If you root for the Republicans and don’t like to see them being trashed, it’s still worth reading.

Drew Weston is a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, a political liberal and an ardent supporter of President Obama during the 2008 campaign. His Times article begins in Washington on Inauguration Day. Weston has brought his eight-year old daughter to the capital to witness the historic event. But the father and professor senses that something is wrong. The man whose story and whose ability to tell a story had captured the nation the previous fall seems not to have a story to tell that blustery January day. The speech is flat and uninspiring. Continue reading →

For the sake of full disclosure, I should acknowledge my own practice of public prayer. I have prayed at the launching of a ship and the dedication of a pulp mill; at the opening of a county board of supervisors meeting and for the Elks and the Rotary clubs.  I have prayed for the lighting of a Christmas tree in the town square and at a wedding reception where the guests shouted “Let’s get drunk!” rather than “Amen!”  when I had finished. Continue reading →

Debt is on the nation’s mind. We’ve got fourteen and a half trillion dollars of the stuff and no one knows what to do with it.  As a taxpayer, my share of the debt is $130,000. Between us, Becky and I, as taxpayers, “owe” the federal government substantially more than we owe the bank that carries our mortgage. The mortgage will be paid off in a few more years. Certainly not so our share of the national debt.

Another way to look at it is that as a citizen, our soon to be one-year old grandson already owes $47,000 to the federal treasury. Happy Birthday, Caleb.

No one knows what to do about our debt and our frustration with debt and debt politics is completely non-partisan.  It’s a nice mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Continue reading →

Sunday’s message will look at the Sermon on the Mount text about avoiding oaths and telling the truth. “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’;” Jesus said, “anything more than this comes from evil.”

Truth telling sometimes gets complicated in a complicated world. Or so we think.  What about the white lies that lubricate our social lives – “You look great in that dress” – or the strategic lies meant to save lives – “There are no Jews hiding in my attic”? Continue reading →