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Native American Ministries Sunday

NC Conference of
The United Methodist Church
700 Waterfield Ridge Place
Garner, NC 27529

Category: Stories

  • An Encouragement for May

    Feed, wait, mix, wait, knead, wait, shape, wait, bake, wait. This was my routine for the last couple of months on Tuesdays, my sermon-writing days. During the season of Lent, my fourteen-year-old daughter and I committed to a weekly sourdough class. It was led by Kendall Vanderslice, who was a baker in Boston when she…

  • An Encouragement for April

    They didn’t even know me. Last fall, I volunteered at Iona Abbey on the remote Isle of Iona in Scotland. I also managed to contract a corneal ulcer. Nothing catastrophic, but not something they could treat on an island off an island off an island. I took a ferry, and a bus, and another ferry,…

  • An Encouragement for March

    In 2003, 75,000 Verizon employees threatened to strike. In preparation, management employees, like me, were to be trained to fill the positions that would be impacted by the strike. I was assigned to “working aloft” or to be a repairperson who climbed telephone poles.

  • An Encouragement for February

    Although you’re reading this in February, I am writing to you on what feels like the 53rd of January, when I should be working on my statistical tables. The past few weeks are a blur of trying to begin the administrative year and care for my congregation, while preaching and living amid the fears and…

  • An Encouragement for January

    While I love the initial glimpses of fall, I am more grateful for a world where there are Januarys. A new year begins with blank paper, new pens, and a crisp sense of possibility. Well-trodden paths of challenging habits are smoothed, and repeated reflections on negative experiences are lifted and left behind.

  • An Encouragement for December

    There have been times in my life when I have stood before a board table full of men to plead my case or that of another. Nine times out of ten, I knew more about the topic and had more firsthand experience than they did, yet just standing in front of men who all looked…