Trigger warning – this is a serious post. A smiling blond man has taken over my newsfeed with a sickening frequency, and it’s not Donald Trump this time. Even the presidential election can’t overpower the big news story that all my friends are talking about. The Stanford rapist Brock Turner and his recent sentencing – a light sentence of only 3-6 months…

At John Hadsell’s memorial service, Jim McDonald (the president of my alma mater, San Francisco Theological Seminary) shared a quote from EB White which reminded him of how John lived his life. Here is the quote in its fullness: If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise…

This weekend many of us gathered for a Safe Church training. A friend of Ben’s, Jane Odell, led it and did a wonderful job presenting some quite unpleasant materials. We saw video testimonies of people who had been victims of abuse, as well as testimonies from ex-abusers, who explained how they used the safety and trust of a church to gain access…

This week in our Faith Exploration Program – a small group of high school students that meets before Youth Group – we focused on how to read the Bible with our brains booted up. I asked the participants to bring two Bible verses with them: one they found to be beautiful, good, true, or helpful, and one they found to be ugly,…

Yes, back by popular demand! The youth haven’t had a pasta dinner in several years, and we wondered if the event would be missed… the answer is YES. We want to feed you some pasta! The youth haven’t had the chance to don their classy white aprons, bowties and top hats (not to mention the fake mustaches) and do their best impressions…

Our church is doing a new thing which we can all be proud of, even though it hasn’t happened yet. We’re still a month or so away, but please, consider yourself invited to puff up your chests and pat one another on the back, because we are running a training to address a very important issue. Not only that, but we are…

Having Rabbi Lerner as a guest preacher this week, we didn’t get to hear this story, but the week after Easter is traditionally Doubting Thomas’ Sunday. It’s a good Sunday to have guest preachers, actually… since the pastors are always exhausted after Holy Week. So, many a seminarian has cut their homiletical teeth, preaching their first sermon ever, on this Guest Preacher…

After our Good Friday service, one of you stopped me with a doozy of a question. What does Jesus’ “dying for our sins” really mean? As we talked, it became clear that to this person, the concept of an atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins was not even a little bit useful, helpful, or spiritually meaningful. If you feel this way,…

Dear friends, Thank you for including study leave in my contract. I spent last week reading and writing, and it felt very refreshing to be able to work on long-term issues and ideas rather than constantly playing catch-up, which is a game I play far too often. I’m going to try to bring that spacious feeling to work more often, and make…

The youth group had such a great time on Sunday that I felt we should share our experiences more widely. So, for you, the wider church community, here is some analysis, some commentary, and a few photos. The theme of our Sunday night meeting was “trust.” This had been put on a card in our suggestion box: “How do you know if…