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A while back I broke down and bought a comfort bike. It’s a clever marketing name for bicycles for old people. For nearly thirty years I had a yellow Schwinn 12-speed…the kind with the super thin tires made for racing though you never did. And a microscopic seat that after a mile on the trail made you feel like you’d gone down the twenty-story Wedgie-O-Matic waterslide at the water park. Plus, you’re hunched over like Quasimodo. Hence, the comfort bike. Some years ago I w

This one’s for pastors/teachers only…and it’s super-nerdy. But sometimes in my coaching other pastors, they’ll ask, “So how did you write your sermons?” First, I had the luxury of a teaching team that I met with a couple of weeks before who threw lots of ideas and resources to whatever the topic was. After that, I was on my own. So here's where it gets weird... I'd get in my car on Friday morning, go for a long drive away from the office, listen to a podcast that typicall

With long-term ministry—that is, ministry over the long haul—there is one big danger zone: Burnout. But burnout has two different faces. First, there’s a burnout that comes from overwork and no margins. The danger with a margin-less lifestyle is when a crisis hits, there’s no emotional energy to deal with it. Second, there is the monotony and, dare I say it, boredom of routine. The reality is that so much of your job is the same thing over and over and over. Big deal, y

This idea of “withness” is challenging in these sequestered times. Perhaps our Coronavirus-isolation is causing us to reconsider what’s important. And perhaps we’ll emerge from this with a little different perspective. When our oldest daughter was thirteen, we moved into a new school district. Since Rachel was typically an internal processor and often learned through observance, it was sometimes difficult to know what she was wrestling with in her inner world, particularly