Pastoral Message, October 2011
Few words are as beloved in church vocabulary as the word “mission,” yet few words are as routinely, theologically misused as the word “mission.” If asked to give a simple …
News & Events
Category: Pastors’ Letters
Pastoral Message, September 2011
A father, who happens to be a police officer, wrote a letter to his kids, sealed it in a plain white envelope, and put it in his locker at work …
Pastoral Message, August 2011
The author Toni Morrison recently gave a commencement address to the students at Rutgers University, in which she made the following comment: “I have often wished that Jefferson had not …
Pastoral Message, July 2011
The English language is a language of verbs. Other languages are full of nouns. Think of German, with its long, compound words to describe persons, places, and things. By contrast, …
Pastoral Message, June 2011
In today’s skeptical society, the phrase “Nullius in verba” (loosely translated as “take no one’s word for anything”) seems like the active slogan of our age. We hear one television …
Pastoral Message, April 2011
African-American preacher, theologian and mystic Howard Thurman (1900-1981) wrote a wonderful poem called “The Threads in My Hand.” It begins this way: “Only one end of the threads, I hold …
Pastoral Message, March 2011
On the list of best non-fiction books for 2010 is a book by Isabel Wilkerson called The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. It is …
Pastoral Message, February 2011
On the list of best non-fiction books for 2010 is a book by Isabel Wilkerson called The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. It is …
Pastoral Message, January 2011
With the start of a new year comes a wonderful opportunity. The month of January means that a new period in each of our lives has begun. It is true …
Pastoral Message, December 2010
One of the most famous lines in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End is the phrase “only connect.” It is both a diagnosis of a problem and a prescription for a …