READ: 1 John 4:7-21 This might sound silly to you… …but you know me enough by to know I’m gonna tell you anyway… But last week was one of the most trying weeks of my life. It was my last week of classes at seminary, in what was the most challenging semester in my life, and heading into that week, I was already completely exhausted. What do I mean by exhausted? Physically, emotionally and mentally depleted. I felt a bit like a zombie. I was impatient and disengaged, I wasn’t s

READ: John 10:11-18 What does it mean to be a hired hand? When we think about it, unless we own our own businesses and don’t report to shareholders or boards, the rest of us who work are hired hands. We are. Even me… And to be a hired hand means that there’s always someone higher up the ladder — even if it’s just one person — who is accountable for us. And to whom we are accountable. If you’re the business owner, hired hands can either make your job easy, or they can make it

READ: Luke 24:36b-48 On any given morning, often before the sun comes up, a group of people stand, hands in pockets, on a small wooden deck outside the entrance to the Pine Ridge Retreat Center in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. On one particular bitterly-cold morning in January, I greeted the group, shaking hands with some men who looked far older than their years. And I greeted a few women who mostly avoided my eyes, but smiled pleasantly as I reached for their hand. And one man,

Read: Acts 4:32-35 and John 20:19-31 One of the many fascinations with my life is that I love — absolutely love — community redevelopment. Resurrecting run-down and forgotten communities, hearing ideas about what a community should look like and how it should feel, and empowering those who have a stake in their communities to begin knitting that new fabric together. It’s really something how my careers and degrees have been in communications and divinity, but this passion of

READ: John 20.1-18 We gather here on this wonderful Easter morning, the same way folks have been gathering here at Trinity for the past 200 years. And the way Christians have been gathering for probably 2,000 years. To celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. Maybe some of us begrudgingly began with the forty days of Lent. I say some of us because I’m sure there are some who have given up something for Lent or took something on in the same period— something that directs their