Our Christmas Eve at Calvary was beautiful and wonderful and so, so Calvary.  The activities of Christmas at Calvary never fail to amaze me in their ridiculous strangeness and, simultaneously, in the holiness that inevitably infuses them all.  And, after seven years of Christmas Eves at Calvary, I can’t imagine why any of this would surprise me.   We started late in the afternoon Thursday with decorating the stable.  “The stable” in our… Read More

Reflections for Advent, especially if this is a hard one for you, posted here.  Advent blessings, everyone.

We recently completed a preaching class for laity here at Calvary.  One of the assignments for each participant was to write an essay addressing the question, “What is good preaching?”  Without exception, all the essays were well thought-out and quite insightful–reading them made me wonder what I possibly had to teach participants!  From time to time I will be posting some of these essays, as I think you will find them thought-provoking… Read More

Since I am the one always blathering on about community, it seems ridiculous that the events of the last few days have shocked and amazed me.  Well, you know what they say about the blind leading the blind–I guess in the case of Calvary Baptist Church it’s more often the blind leading everybody else who can see just fine, thank you very much. I realized early Thursday morning that my lofty goal… Read More