My (minister's) life

I've looked back at the development of my blog and I'm not happy.  It's fine.  Fine.  But as I read recent posts, they've taken a turn:  they're often harpy editorial commentary about events of the day.  I'm boring myself.  What I'm not doing is what I hoped to do in this blog when it began:  show a "ministers' life," from the inside.

So today, a new start:  a new look.  More frequent entries.  More detail about my interior life, avoiding excruciating minutae.  I won't write about breakfast (I may post photos).  I'll try to turn my brain inside out and dump the contents to show myself whether God is evident from the place I stand.  The premise of this blog is that ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ are oddities--often caricatured, made fun of in jokes, or put on strange and uneasy pedestals by friends.  We're public figures with private lives, and our vocation demands a tenuous reconciliation between those two parts of ourselves.

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Today (Thursday) is a sermon prep day.  I spend an hour preparing for every minute that I speak.  20 minutes is 20 hours of preparation, give or take.  Some is reading.  Most is writing and re-writing.  I write at Decatur establishments:  Java Monkey (home of the above-pictured sandwich), Dancing Goats, or the Thinking Man Tavern.  I've got two sermons to work on today.  Sunday's is a reflection on "Thou Shalt Not."

Tonight's sermon comes first.  It's for the Presbyterian LGBTQ Pride service, to be held at Morningside Presbyterian (7pm for you folks in town).  It's a bit strange to be a straight pastor preaching a pride service.  I'm not sure you'd ask a white preacher to preach your church's King Day celebration.  But I'm happy to do it.

I want my message to do two things:  make LGBTQ folk feel empowered about owning the good news in the Bible; and let the wider church know that LGBTQ folks are the church's "Good Samaritans," emissaries from God, ministering to our bloodied carcass, nursing us back into health.  The white church's diminishing influence in the world directly corresponds to a) its racism and b) its homophobia.