Coffee is the most traded good in the world behind oil, due to the fact that most coffee is grown in developing countries but consumed in developed countries1. Although coffee is part of many people’s ‘daily grind,’ most do not realize that before reaching their mug or their church coffeepot their coffee has been grown, […]
After the Harvest: A Church Journeys Beyond the Community Garden
The Missing Ingredients Trinity Lutheran Church, Nampa, Idaho’s journey with food preparation and preservation began in the kitchen. In 2010 we, like so many community gardens in Southwest Idaho, were distributing thousands of pounds of fresh produce to food banks and food pantries, our own pantry included. Looking from our cupboards full of canned and […]
Growing Home
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.1 Food is medicine. When you are not properly nourished you cannot think, reason, or behave normally. When you are properly fed you have the ability to operate at your full physical and mental potential. Many in our communities are not operating at their full potential […]
On the Way: Bread Enough and to Spare
In the realm of human life, hunger is omnipotent. It can level a city, throttle a kingdom, halt an army, empty a countryside, stunt a growing body, shrivel a grown one, and wrench God out of our heaven. Images of hunger are terrifying, largely for the suffering they portray but also, I think, because they […]
Are Food Deserts Just a Mirage?
“The South Side really has so much beauty,” she told me. “The old buildings, the lakefront.” “I’m acclimated to the neighborhood now. But not everyone is able to.” We were speaking of Woodlawn, Lyletta and I. She’s lived there 11 years, she knows everything about her neighborhood, she’s written about it extensively, she can’t afford […]
Remembering Thomas C. Knutson 1946 – 2013
The Rev. Thomas C. Knutson, pastor of First Ev. Lutheran Church, Harvey, a founder of Let’s Talk, died on September 18, 2013 of pancreatic cancer. Pr. Knutson served as Chairman of the Editorial Council for a decade and a half from the first issue at Epiphany 1996, through the years when the journal was a […]
As I See It: The Pastor as Projector of a Worldview
This issue of Let’s Talk is devoted to leadership in the Church. There is a natural temptation to look to models of leadership from social institutions because the Church is a society in the world that operates according to social, political, and economic “laws.” Pastoral leaders can be taught leadership skills that come out of […]
On The Way: Tell Me, Muse, of the Pastor of Many Ways
It is a little after 2 p.m. on a Wednesday during Lent as I write. Since arriving in the office at 9 a.m., I have: prayed the office of readings from the iBreviary app on my phone, revised the prayers of the people for this weekend’s services, tried to help arrange for a car payment […]
Urban Acacia: An Affiliated Mission Community That Bridges the Gaps
It is a truism that we teach all of our kids in this popular Church nursery rhyme, Here is the Church and Here is the steeple. Open it up, and Here are all the… People. Churches have people in them. Second only to steeples, churches are identified by the people inside of them. People gathered […]
Next Level Leadership and Our Move to Multisite
Background My wife, Carol, and I are both second-career pastors. When we started out in pastoral ministry in our early 40s, we found ourselves leaning heavily towards a model of Pastor as Leader. Like many others who were entering ministry at the turn of the millennium, we found ourselves looking at first-call opportunities in churches […]