The
Second Fall and the Christian Call - by Stephen Hiemstra
Walking through the bookstore at Gordon Conwell Theological
Seminary in Charlotte, NC last month a book by James Emery White
caught my eye. The title was, Serious Times: Making Your Life
Matter in an Urgent Day . White was a past president of the
seminary. Full Story
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| Greetings!
The Monthly welcomes Elder Stephen Hiemstra of
Centreville Presbyterian Church for this edition of the
Monthly.
A note of clarity. The Rev. Dr. Ann Philbrick
has only retired as a contributing writer of the
MONTHLY. Ann continues as a partner of Heartwood
LLC, a consulting company dedicated to helping
congregations grow in healthy ways.
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| Drinking a Latte and Thinking About
Poverty by Neil Craigan |
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I'm sitting here enjoying a large skimmed latte from
the Daily Grind and thinking about poverty! A strange
feeling indeed.
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| Presbytery Meetings by John
Wimberly |
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I love to go to Presbytery meetings because I am able
to catch up with people I enjoy, share tales of success
and failure in ministry, and listen to the individuals
God is calling to ministry and congregations.
I hate
going to Presbytery meetings for almost everything else.
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| Taming the Busyness by MaryAnn
McKibben Dana |
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As a bona fide J on the
Myers-Briggs, I've been a collector of organizational
tips for a long time. Ours is a lofty calling, but the
fact remains that we still need to get things done.
There are plenty of urgent and important matters in
ministry (death of a church member). Others are not
necessarily urgent, but deeply important (our own
self-care). Still other issues are merely urgent, but
not important (insert your own example here). How do we
organize our lives so as to be the best stewards of our
time, while providing flexibility to respond to needs as
they arise?
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| The Resilient Religious Right by
Henry Brinton |
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With the deaths of prominent evangelical pastors
Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy last year, funeral
bells began tolling for the Religious Right. Political
columnist E.J. Dionne wrote Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith
and Politics after the Religious Right, and theologian
Jim Wallis offered The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith
& Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. Even
religious and civil liberties attorney John Whitehead,
who assisted Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit
against President Clinton, joined the chorus with an
article titled, "The Passing of the Christian Right."
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