Oct 7, 2015 | Weekly Words
Exactly one month after Emily Hull McGee was elected as the twelfth pastor of First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I stood alone in my bathroom, staring down at a positive pregnancy test. From there I proceeded to do everything opposite of how I’d...
Sep 30, 2015 | Weekly Words
Once in a team-building exercise our group was asked to create a cover page for our autobiographies; I drew one of those signposts with multiple arrows all pointing different directions, and titled my “book” Neither Here nor There. I grew up in a family that moved to...
Sep 23, 2015 | Weekly Words
On my first shift as a full-time chaplain, I fell down on the job. I mean that literally. Before I even got into the hospital, I was walking down the steps in the parking garage, and I slipped. It had been raining all day, and the stairwell was open to the elements,...
Sep 16, 2015 | Weekly Words
If you are wondering if you are doing ministry, even though you aren’t in ministry, you are. Your calling is deeper than this current job or season. Your calling penetrates everything and everyone you encounter. It was real. It is real. You are a person of God in this...
Sep 9, 2015 | Weekly Words
Ecclesiology through the eyes of a three-year-old preacher’s kid cracks me up. Our son, Logan, recently learned the little rhyme where you lace your fingers together, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, see all the people.”...
Aug 19, 2015 | Weekly Words
When the words fall forth in the conversation, the relationship comes to a screeching halt. The words lay bricks between us. They form a wall through which hands cannot hold, eyes cannot meet, and words cannot transform. “You haven’t _______. You wouldn’t understand.”...
