Category Archives: Community Concerns

Sermon in the Streets

Supply preaching is a strange phenomenon, but I gladly provide the supply myself. I have decent tolerance for strange situations, and I’ll include last weekend in that. I was supply preaching at a former church of mine, the one where I’d served as Intern and then Summer Minister, the same church that later became my ordaining congregation. I have a great fondness for it still. It’s located in midtown Manhattan, a place rarely crowded on a Sunday in summer. Unless – and this is a considerable exception to that generality – that Sunday comes at the end of June, when the Gay Pride Parade marches down Fifth Avenue.

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Praying for Good Weather

Recently, I spent the weekend at a remote retreat center in the Jersey Pine Barrens, where a small convocation was holding its annual meeting. The accommodations were fairly rustic, but hardly anyone grumbled since the weather there was so great. Because the weather is a nice place to start any conversation, I commented on how lovely it was to the center director.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she said. “You know, I prayed for good weather!”

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