If you could pinpoint your favorite pastor or preacher or Sunday School teacher, why would they be your favorite? What was it about them that drew your appreciation, your admiration, your openness and reflection? Was it the way they dressed? Or the accent they did or didn’t have? Was it…

Do you know our mission statement? We are a community of believers who seek to grow: in our faith and understanding as we live the Way of Jesus Christ. What about our four core values? Inclusion Freedom of Faith Service Spiritual Growth I’ll admit that I don’t often start with…

In a room, someplace, wood creaks and cracks and crackles under pressure and heat, smoking, flickering flames warming, lighting, luring you into imagination as the glockenspiel is pealing, and angels echoing eerie, echoing dreamy, and that familiar baritone comforts with his crooning: Do you see what I see? Louis Armstrong once said that voice…

I have this vivid memory of being in 9th grade. We lived in Mississippi, and one night I went outside with my dog. — We played for a bit, and then I let him run around, and I snuck over to the corner of the fence. I looked up at the darkest sky, littered with glimmering stars. In that moment I was overtaken, and a song welled up in me, and I began singing out loud: O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder,

This summer I sat atop a lighthouse, watching the waves come in and draw out, over and over again, a kind of dance to the sun that eventually woke up the sky with gentle hues of yellow and pink and orange. Somehow the waves drew me out with them, into the masterpiece of air molecules scattering light off the coast of Maine. Like most of the other stories I’ve shared during this series on Thin Places, I was mesmerized, Kelsey too, without much to really say; beauty had taken hold of us.

Around the time of my birthday this year, I realized I was watching a number of mountain climbing or mountaineering documentaries. — Everest, K2, El Capitan. I was mesmerized, if not in part because the greatest climbing accomplishment I have to date is scaling this pulpit. Upon reflection, I came to recognize that perhaps my fixation on people conquering mountains had less to do with my own desire for the physicality of…