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Essays

Thoughtful personal reflections from a variety of perspectives about issues relevant to Christian leaders

What shall I call you?

By Martin B. Copenhaver

Martin B. Copenhaver ponders whether he should be called “Martin,” “pastor” or some other title, such as “The Very Right Reverend Doctor Julius W. (‘Who Are You To Question My Authority?’) Johnson III.”

Mark Chaves: Does our church need to hire a consultant or not?

By Mark Chaves Professor of sociology, religion and divinity, Duke University

Congregations hire consults for all sorts of reasons. Some of the reasons they give for doing so may surprise you. So too might some reasons they do not give.

Norman Sandridge: Leaders should be humane, eager to learn and honor-loving

By Norman Sandridge

We often take a leader's ambition to be a bad thing. But the late 5th Century BC figure Xenophon shows the good of a love of honor—if conjoined with a love of learning and humanity.

Jenny Williams: Our interruptions are our work

By Jenny Williams

What did Jesus do when he was interrupted? Or Simon of Cyrene when ordered to carry this man’s cross?

David Ford and Peter Ochs: Community that’s not monochrome

The founders of Scriptural Reasoning, a forum for interreligious conversation, talk about the fruits of friendship, conflict and drama.

Sister Sarah and the bell

By William H. Lamar IV Pastor, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church

Sister Sarah, age 100, had grown up at St. Phillip AME and remembered everyone who founded it. One day, the Rev. Bill Lamar writes, he asked her about the old bell. And then he listened.

Money off the shelf

By Lillian Daniel Senior minister, First Congregational Church, Dubuque, Iowa

Early in her ministry, Lillian Daniel finds that she has intense anger about money, but no place, in her vocational life, to express it. She writes about her experience in the book, “This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.”