Imagine if you will, a double pendulum suspended from a great height. At the end of a long wire is a large spherical mass. From the bottom of that sphere another wire of some length, shorter than the first, extends to another smaller sphere. The first mass is moved a distance away from the center […]

I’ve heard a number of people talk about what they would do if they won the lottery. Most of us have probably given some thought about what we would do if we suddenly had resources most people only dream about. Since December 2007 (the date economists give for the start of the Great Recession), however, […]

The voice on the phone was hesitant and apologetic. The story that unfolded was as follows. He said he was a German translator. He had worked in Berlin and Leipzig, but work was drying up so he returned to the United States with his wife and six children. He had taught German and Latin in […]

When the financial recession began, I had been working as the Chicago/Milwaukee City Coordinator for the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC) for almost two years. My colleagues and I didn’t know what to expect for the upcoming years. Would we have to downsize? Would our partner nonprofits and social ministries be able to afford LVC volunteers? […]

In April, a group of pastors held the first annual “Epic Fail” conference in Pennsylvania. If the reviews are to be believed, they gamely and genuinely questioned an experience many pastors grow painfully accustomed to: Attend a ministry conference. Sit through a hyper-successful, charismatic pastor’s high-octane delivery. Leave the conference with, a) the knowledge their […]

Reading the title for this issue of Let’s Talk, “The Church’s Mission in Financial Recession,” my mind wanders in two different, though not unrelated, directions. As a pastor who has spent almost 30 years in congregations living in impoverished conditions or in relationship with people critically impacted by the systems and structures of poverty, I […]

Last year, our congregation president, a sales executive, lost her job. She’s still not working. A few months ago, our former treasurer, a CPA with a finance company, was also let go. And two months ago, the son of a couple in our congregation, a painter who did beautiful work with home interiors, lost his […]

I have made two visits to St. Augustine’s House in Oxford, Michigan. The first was in 2006, after my second year of divinity school and my summer clinical pastoral education unit with a hospice care provider, and before my endorsement interviews and my wedding. The second, deferred for the sake of internship, the arrival of […]

And Moses answered and said, “But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The LORD hath not appeared unto thee.” And the LORD said unto him, “What is that in thine hand?” And he said, “A rod” (Exodus 4:1-2). It has always been difficult convincing un-churched twenty […]

What effect has the economic downturn had on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)? The ELCA is church in three interdependent expressions: the churchwide organization, synods, and congregations. Or, as St. Paul would have it, when one member in the body suffers, we all suffer. When we all suffer, well, maybe new life finally […]