Pastor’s Corner

Kanye West and Jay-Z are no doubt names you have heard, though I’d be shocked (and pleasantly surprised) if you came to me next Sunday reciting any of their lyrics. Their most recent collaborative project, Watch The Throne, is fun, unapologetically boastful, boisterous, and (my favorite) “provocative.” Take for example the lyrics to the opening […]

A lot of self-help books teach us that growth is the function of increasingly acquired skills, more relationships and expanded networks, sound investing and ways to create more streams of revenue, more degrees…that type of stuff. All great advice, and all operating under a similar basic assumption:  Growth is about adding to what you already […]

“There must be always remaining in every man’s life some place for the singing of angels — some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness — something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of […]

About a year ago I was freshly married, freshly crowned a “Master of All Things Divine” (that’s what we call the M.Div, to ward off depression), and about to start my first job. Yep, this small church in Hyde Park had called me to be their senior minister – a risk for all parties involved. […]

Inventors of technology are known for stuff and not ideas. From Ben Franklin to Eli Whitney to Nicola Tesla to Bill Gates: each of these people we associate with a thing. Steve Jobs was no different. Say the name “Steve Jobs” to someone sitting next to you and ask what pops up. They are inevitably […]

(taken from the September 2011 Messenger) Well, not exactly. But the board and I did meet on September 8th to do a bit of visioning as we move forward into the Fall and *sigh* Winter. A potluck was involved, per University Church custom (our translation of Matthew 18:20 reads, “Where two or three are gathered, […]