Clergy burnout is a hot topic now. My two most popular posts of late have been been Pastors in Peril, and the snarky satirical Ten Highly Efficient Strategies for Crushing Your Pastors Morale. And when the New York Times notices religion at all it is usually some aspect of it that is aberrant or weird, […]
Too many of our new pastors in the mainline church leave the ministry after a few years. There are many reasons why this happens, but for whatever reason, it is not good. It’s bad for them and bad for the church, and it is bad stewardship to train someone who only serves a short time. […]
(This is a talk I gave to “The Saints” which is the United Church of Christ retired clergy group in the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. The talk was in Cromwell, CT on May 14, 2015) I’d like to thank you for inviting me to be with you today. I have great respect for ministry […]
Is the cross of Jesus Christ implicated in the violence of our world? More specifically, does the church’s theology of the cross, expressed in its various views of atonement, contribute to fostering violence? The English word “atonement” was made up by the pioneering translator, William Tyndale, when he translated the Bible into English. It was […]
Prepare Three Envelopes: A Parable about Pastoral Ministry The Lost Soul of the Procedural Church Ten Highly Effective Strategies for Crushing your Pastor’s Morale Ruminations on Burnout: Should Pastors Really be Working? Is Clergy Burnout a Symptom of a Crisis of Identity and Vocation? Pastor’s Aren’t Prophets: Some Unsolicited Advice for Newly-Minted Ministers A Hundred […]
The year past marks the first full year of Retired Pastor Ruminates and once again I turn to Google analytics to have fun with the numbers. The site had 14,234 visits, with 21,648 pageviews and 9,744 visitors. You came from 104 countries, in this order: United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, Germany, Philippines, South […]
One of the hottest topics in the church right now is clergy burnout. Everyone is in agreement that it is a problem, but when it comes to the solution, not so much. There are a lot of wise, commonsense admonishments about self-care and spiritual disciplines. They should be heeded, but they tend to address the […]
I know a lot of ministers. That might seem like a statement of the obvious coming from one who has been a minister for over thirty years, but I know even more ministers than you might think. For one thing, I was a seminary chaplain for several years and all my former students are […]
(I delivered this paper to The Monday Evening Club on January 25, 2010. I have slightly revised this version.) As the first Monday Evening Club paper of a new decade I want to do some looking backward as well as gazing forward. Looking backward is not so hard, since we all have 20/20 hindsight, but […]
“The theological character of the Christological story is the key to its eschatological significance.” Christoph Schwöbel The cross of Jesus Christ stands over the future and provides the key to understanding both “the end of the world and the ends of God.” I use the phrase “the cross” as Paul did, as shorthand for the […]
When I Survey . . . 