The task of the preacher is a three-part job. First, it is to take stock of the scripture readings assigned for the week: What do they say? What is at the heart of them? What do we tend to overlook here? How do they connect and relate to the rest of the bible? Second, it is to take stock of the world around us: What is happening out there? What is hopeful? What is shocking? Where is the good and the evil? What is breaking our hearts? And third, it is to take stock of your peo

Last semester, one of students asked if she could be baptized. And not just baptized, but baptized at The Rappahannock River. So we worked it out with Joe over at St. George's, she asked three of our House Moms to be her Godmothers, and we announced it in our campus ministry group chat. And suddenly, here there were, 25 people on the bank of the river in the first week of November for this baptism. And there was this moment-- if we had a big projector screen I'd show it to

This week our campus ministry participated in the classic first week of the semester event, Club Carnival, which is when every single club at the University of Mary Washington signs up, is assigned a booth, and sets up their tri-fold poster board and their pamphlets and their QR codes and their giveaways, they put out a sign-up sheet, and we all table together and say Please join our club!!!!!!! Club Carnival can be kinda awkward because it's a game of first impressions. It's

Back in seminary, we used to host this annual variety show -- maybe kind of like Saturday Night Live -- where seminarians and faculty and groups would put on different skits and do bits and sing songs, it was all very fun, and I was the emcee every year. Maybe because they thought I was the funniest or maybe I was the most jester shaped? Who knows. But one of my favorite bits to do would be to pull out a journal from behind the lectern, and say "oh my gosh you guys, I found s

There is this joke sometimes that preachers only ever have one sermon and they give it every week just wrapping it up in different passages of scripture. Of course it's not entireeeeely true but I'm sure you've been in churches before where you sit in the pews week after week and think: Hmm.. I think I've heard this one before . A pastor's one sermon might sound something like "God is always with you, in the good and the bad, always God is right beside you." Or it might be "

From the outside of the church, the work of the church -- the tasks of a Christian life -- might seem obvious: prayer, worship, scripture reading (both alone and in a group), confession, and participation in the sacraments. These things are all good and crucial and true, and, if they were all you saw in Christianity, you would be missing out on some of the best Christianity has to offer: Christian friendship. As a pastor, my hope is of course that my students would enjoy wors

This morning, Fr. Rock Higgins reminded us that sometimes the parables are negative examples of behavior, and that the "figure" in the parables is not always God. So it would be easy to read this parable and think: God is like an unjust judge but nicer. It would be easy to read this and surmise that God also doesn't want to be bothered, but will relent if asked, or perhaps relent after asking only six or seven times rather than fifteen or twenty. But rather this parable is an

When I started as your campus minister, I had just two students, one who was a senior about to graduate and one who was so burned out she...

The students and young adults with whom I work are frustrated sometimes with what they describe as "how an Episcopal priest answers...

Which image of God would you meet if you got to choose? The God who came alive in a bush that was blazing but not consumed? The God who...

What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the Pit? (Psalm 30:10a) Please be seated! Back in seminary, at the conclusion of my...

I wonder what you would say if Jesus handed you a megaphone and said "now go preach on the corner of William and Princess Anne Streets"?...

Before I was a campus minister and before I was ordained, I lived in Berkeley California and worked at a little Episcopal church in the...

There is a tradition of spirituality in the church called Ignatian spirituality- named after Ignatius of Loyola who found an order called...

In our campus ministry, we play a little game called Stump The Priest , or in ELCA language, Stump The Pastor . It started out as a...

One of the interesting aspects of my particular ministry within the church is that I am constantly finding myself in ministry and in...

Our campus ministry, if it knows nothing else, knows how to execute the perfect icebreaker question. A few weeks ago, the question was...

You may have seen reports of the sermon given by bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington at the post-inaugural Service of Prayer...

Between Christmas and New Years I had the lovely privilege of attending my friend Spencer's wedding up in New Hampshire and being a...

I preached a sermon about this same story two years ago, in Advent, at Trinity. Then it was Advent 2 and not 3. Then it was Matthew 3 and...