Renee Good was shot in Minneapolis, MN, on January 7, 2026, by an ICE officer. In response, on January 9, Abide in Love organized a prayer vigil, held at First United Methodist Church of Rolla. I offered the prayer below.

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Gracious and loving God,

We come together this evening to mourn, to remember lives lost due to hatred, due to fear, and due to a yearning for power. We particularly grieve Renee Nicole Good, whose life was tragically cut short through the actions of an ICE agent. We grieve all those who have died in this past year of creeping authoritarianism. We grieve those who were targeted because of their skin color, their language, their ethnicity, or their national origin. We grieve those who have died because of their commitment to democracy and freedom and the fair treatment of all people, and so were targeted as enemies of those who seek to establish a regime built on violence instead. We mourn the loss of the norms and mutual respect that are fundamental to living together.

We pray this day that everyone would be able to see your image in each person they meet. Jesus Christ, we remember your admonition that just as we do to the least of your siblings, so too we do to you. Grant that we would live in a world where our leaders, our law enforcement agencies, and everyone in a position of authority would value each human life just as you do.

We grieve together this evening, but not as those who have no hope. We know that you are with us here, holding us together in the palm of your hand and binding us together by the power of your Holy Spirit. We know that one day, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Yet in our despair, we cry out, “How long! How long, O Lord?” We ask that you would grant us patience, and that you would comfort us as we await the renewal of all things, the reconciliation of all people. Strengthen us as we resist those who do harm in your name, those who sow hatred disguised as love, and those who destroy freedom while claiming to defend it. And above all, bind us together into your beloved community so that we can lean on one another and sustain each other for the long journey.

Amen.

An edited version of this appeared in the Phelps County Focus on January 2, 2026. After submission, I realized that the “A” in “SMART” should be “attainable,” not “actionable.” I don’t think that changes the thrust of the argument or the message. My short-term goals are both actionable and attainable, whereas my life goal is neither.

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New Year’s Day is nothing more than an accident of the calendar, with no particular relationship to the seasons, the sun, or the stars. And yet, most of us take its cue to reflect on the past year and to plan for the year to come. For several years, I have been using the same basic reflection that identifies “doing” and “being” goals.

The culmination of the reflection is identifying my life’s goal, along with goals for the year that align with it. My short-term doing and being goals are SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, this year, I plan to run a half-marathon, to raise the productivity and impact of my research program, and to be an effective mentor. In the coming weeks and months, I can take concrete actions towards those goals, which I can evaluate next year at this time.

Life goals are different. Sometimes, a life goal is related to self-actualization or self-transcendence. Perhaps attaining some career success or guiding the next generation of your family to success or learning to play an instrument.

My life goal relates directly to what I believe to be the core of the Gospel: The kingdom of God is at hand! Jesus Christ was born to establish His eternal kingdom, which is universal human flourishing. The task laid before each of His followers is to participate in the emergence of His kingdom, which means fostering human flourishing.

So the question is, what can I do to foster human flourishing? The reality is that the world’s needs are too great. Universal human flourishing is unattainable in this finite world. I’m only one person, with limited time, resources, and knowledge, so I can only have a limited impact. Within those limits, what can I possibly do for the sake of God’s kingdom?

My life’s goal is: to enable the creation of a community where LGBTQ+ people can flourish; an organization, a place, a set of activities, and a gathering of people that enable everyone to meet their emotional, connectional, social, and spiritual needs.

This is the polar opposite of a SMART goal. It is nebulous and unmeasurable. The actions I should take are unclear. It is of only marginal personal relevance. And the time horizon is “someday.” In truth, it is impossibly ambitious. And yet, this goal is what has driven me forward for the past six years and what continues to energize all that I do in the community. It is like a distant mountain towards which I am journeying. I may never arrive, and I have no idea what the terrain is like between here and there, but the joy is in the pursuit.

What is your life goal? How will you participate in God’s emerging kingdom by fostering human flourishing? The needs are great; you cannot fulfill them all. But the inability to do everything does not absolve your responsibility to do something. Who do you truly, deeply care about? The poor, the prisoner, the homeless, the abused, the stranger, the outsider? Or, do you want to work towards reconciliation, among races or nations or within families? These are all worthy pursuits, but nobody has the time, resources, skills, and knowledge to address them all. Better to focus on the one thing that evokes your passion and aligns with your abilities.

And then, pursue it. You may never reach your goal—indeed, if you do, you probably have not set your sights high enough. But the joy is in the pursuit. The joy is in finding someone who is in need—material, emotional, connectional, or spiritual—and enabling them to flourish. The joy is in witnessing the emergence of God’s kingdom in part while we await its fullness at the end of the age.

Instead of running from that which you fear, pursue love, the universal love that binds us all together, the love that is the root of our flourishing, the love that calls out the best in yourself. Learn from your successes and failures, identify where God is calling you to participate, and join in the blossoming of God’s kingdom of love. Amen.

Sermon for October 19, 2025, Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost. Based on Luke 18:1-8.

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Recently, I listened to an audiobook titled The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett, which was set around the year 1000 A.D. in southwest England. Two of the main characters were Wilwulf, an alderman, and his wife, Ragna. For a variety of reasons, the two of them lived in separate houses within the same compound and each had their own money and important documents in treasure chests.

At a critical juncture in the story, Wilwulf was murdered. Ragna and others in the town rushed to the scene of the crime to see what had happened. Wilwulf’s brother took possession of his treasure chest and established that he would take on the role of alderman until the king could name someone. While she was in Wilwulf’s house, someone broke into Ragna’s house and took her treasure chest.

So there she was, widow of a powerful nobleman, mother of three young boys under the age of five who should have been his heirs. But she was literally penniless, the victim of theft. Should she have inherited Wilwulf’s treasure? Perhaps, but his brother just took it, and Ragna had no way to fight against him. What about her money? Well, good luck finding out who stole it, given that the likely culprit was the brother who was now in charge of everything, including law enforcement. The king might make things right eventually, but how was Ragna going to survive in the meantime? Given that this was a novel, she had a powerful friend who helped her out, but real life usually isn’t that convenient.

This is the kind of scenario described in today’s parable. Widows are often entitled to some sort of support, but just as often, their adversaries must be forced to provide it. As Trey Ferguson wrote, “The people who benefit from your bondage will never celebrate your liberation.” The same is true of those who benefit from another person’s poverty.

We would like to believe that today, we are a nation of laws, not men, and that someone can’t simply take your property by force and get away with it. That’s basically true. No longer are we governed by rich men who hire men-at-arms that use violence against the poor and marginalized. Instead, we are governed by rich men and women, and large corporations, who use the legal system against the poor and marginalized. They can afford lawyers who bury their opponents in paperwork. Often, poor people just give in and settle because they can’t afford to fight for their rights.

Injustice comes in many forms. Jesus told this parable, as Luke wrote, “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” In the preceding chapter, Jesus prophesied about the destruction of Jerusalem. He warned them that hard times were coming. Indeed, most of the twelve apostles were martyred, as were many other early Christians. Those who weren’t killed were persecuted. They were cast out of the synagogues, excluded from Jewish communities. They stood in opposition to Greco-Roman culture as well. So, they had no protection. For four hundred years, they were routinely persecuted and marginalized.

And yet, they persevered. They held fast to the faith they inherited from the Twelve and from Paul. They lived by the Gospel teaching that everyone is welcome in God’s kingdom—male, female, Jew, Greek, free, slave, everyone. Jewish communities were ethnically distinct, and most pagan religions were segregated by class in addition to ethnicity. Christians were different in that the poor and the wealthy would worship together as equals, as siblings in God’s family. Their faithful commitment to God’s kingdom, empowered by persistent prayer, enabled them to preserve the Christian faith so that we might inherit it. They persevered so that we might know Christ.

Five hundred years ago, history repeated itself. During the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants took turns persecuting one another. Yet once again, our faithful ancestors persevered, so that we could come to know a loving God who welcomes everyone who calls on Christ’s name. Like the early church, Protestant churches welcomed people of any class or ethnicity, in contrast to the corrupt Catholic church that privileged the wealthy and powerful. Our Protestant forerunners were committed to their understanding of God despite the injustice that was continually rained down upon them.

Julian of Norwich was a mystic who lived around 1400 A.D. She famously wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” The message revealed to her in her “showings” was that in the end, God wins. This is the central message of the book of Revelation, and indeed a consistent theme throughout the New Testament. In the end, God wins. In the end, all will be well, everything will be reconciled to God, and everyone will be reconciled to one another. If all is not well, then it’s not the end! We cannot know when God’s kingdom will come in all its fullness. We can only experience God’s kingdom in part. But we know that if we persevere, God’s kingdom will be present in and among us. Someday. God’s kingdom is universal human flourishing—the innocent prisoners will be freed, the hungry will be fed, everyone will have what they need. We just need to have faith that God will provide.

But wait a minute: telling someone that they “just need to have faith” is denying their struggles. It’s denying reality. It’s like telling someone to calm down: Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down! When we get wrapped up in our anger, or fear, or anxiety, or despair, we can’t escape just by saying that we should. We need some way to break the cycle. We need a key to unlock the prison of our emotions.

That key is prayer. Remember, that’s the whole point of this parable, to encourage us to be persistent in prayer. What kept the widow going? How was she able to keep attacking the unjust judge? Well, she was probably fueled by a deep sense of injustice. She was certainly confident that she would one day prevail. And she must have had help. She would have needed financial support to keep going, and spiritual strength to endure the continuing injustice of her situation. If you have nothing else and nobody to depend on, you can always turn to God.

My experience of prayer is not so much that I convince God to do something for me. It’s more that God changes me so that I can get what I need for myself. Sometimes, prayer enables me to take a heavy weight off my shoulders and hand it over to God to carry. Sometimes, prayer enables me to see a path forward that was previously hidden from me, or to realize that there are people in my life who can help me or guide me. Sometimes, prayer gives me the confidence to take a step that’s scary. I may not know what the future brings, but I know that God will be there with me, so I can be confident when I make a decision that it will turn out alright. Sometimes, prayer enables me to find wisdom or compassion that someone else in my life needs—a friend, a colleague, someone in the church, or someone in the community. Often, prayer helps me to turn down the noise of life so that I can hear what God has to say.

Most of all, prayer keeps me connected to the Source of all being.  I feel that connection right in my solar plexus, an uplifting, an energy that keeps me going. God is both immanent and transcendent—right here beside, among, and within us, but also above us, lifting us up into a higher state of being. Prayer both reminds me of God’s immanence and connects me to God’s transcendence.

I subscribe to a daily devotion from the Center for Action and Contemplation, which is run by Father Richard Rohr. Their mission is to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action. Their goal is to help people live out this wisdom in practical ways—so that they become instruments of love, peacemaking, and positive change in the world. If all you do is struggle for justice, the inevitable setbacks and failures on that path will wear you down. If all you do is sit at home and pray, you won’t ultimately have an impact on the world. But if you bring the two together, you will be sustained in your work of transforming the world, so that you have the strength to overcome the obstacles in your way. Here is a selection from today’s meditation that is appropriate:

What is needed in Christianity today is far bigger than any mere structural rearrangement. It’s a revolutionary change in Christian consciousness itself. It’s a change of mind and of heart through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Only such a sea-change of consciousness—drawing from the depths of the Great Ocean of Love—will bear fruits that will last. 

I believe the teaching of contemplation is absolutely key to embracing Christianity as a living tradition. If we settle for old patterns of habitual and reactionary thought, any new phenomenon that emerges will be just one more of the many reformations in Christianity that have characterized our entire history. The movement will quickly and predictably subdivide into unhelpful dualisms that pit themselves against one another like Catholic or Protestant, intellectual or emotional, feminist or patriarchal, activist or contemplative—instead of the wonderful holism of Jesus, a fully contemplative way of being active and involved in our suffering world. 

Father Richard Rohr, “Emerging Christianity: A Non-Dual Vision,” Radical Grace 23, no. 1 (2010): 3.

The most famous example of this synergy was the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Martin Luther King, Jr., wasn’t just a civil rights leader. He was also a Baptist pastor and the son of a pastor. He was the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Soon after, he joined about sixty other pastors and religious leaders in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was instrumental in advancing civil rights. The SCLC would routinely gather activists for prayer prior to their protests and other actions, so that they would all have the courage to face their opponents. It’s no exaggeration to say that segregation would not, could not, have ended without God’s help, God working through the activists who tapped into God’s power through prayer.

I am about to go on a retreat. Well, I’ll be carrying a rifle and may harvest an elk, but the real reason I go to the woods is to be present with God. I tell people it’s a professional development retreat because I travel with some high-powered academics—former department chairs, Curators’ Distinguished Professors, and so forth. But once the season opens, I don’t see them much. Instead, I have hours upon hours of silence in which to hear God’s voice. Lots of time in which to pray with my rosary. Lots of time to meditate on God’s Word. Lots of time to turn down the noise of daily life. Lots of time to lay my burdens down and to seek spiritual renewal. I hope to return with a new sense of clarity, a new sense of God’s will for my life, and a new sense of connection to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then being renewed and refreshed, I will have the strength to persist in doing good. We are all called to participate in the blossoming of God’s kingdom. We are all called to help other people to flourish and to foster reconciliation. There is so much work to do. Every time I read the news, I’m disheartened by yet another crisis, or dysfunction in Washington, or a continuing war, or whatever. But through prayer, I find the strength to carry on doing my little part in fostering human flourishing. That’s all I can do—my little part. But if we all do our part, if we are all empowered through prayer, then together, we can experience a glimpse of God’s kingdom here and now. Through prayer, may God grant you the patience and persistence to seek the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, God’s reconciliation, God’s renewal of all Creation. Amen.

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Article published in the Phelps County Focus on September 18, 2025. This is an abridged and re-focused version of my sermon by the same name.

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In Luke 15, Jesus preached about a shepherd leaving 99 sheep to go look for the one he had lost. Sheep are almost too stupid to live. They don’t run away. They go where they are guided to go. If a sheep is lost, it’s because it was left behind when the shepherd moved the rest of the flock along.

Sheep are like …

Continue on the Phelps County Focus site

Humans are meant to flourish and thrive. Abraham Maslow developed a “hierarchy of needs” that encapsulate everything a person needs to flourish. The foundation levels are physiological and safety needs. Everyone needs water, food, shelter, and security.

Once those needs are fulfilled at some minimal level, though, each person needs to satisfy higher psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs. Love and belonging: we are meant to be in loving relationships with one another, whether friends, family, chosen family, or a larger community. Esteem: we all need both self-esteem and status and recognition in our community, however that is defined. Self-actualization: we are driven to make the most of our capabilities, achieve our potential.

Later, Maslow and other researchers added a sixth need: self-transcendence. We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. That can be a community, a religion, an organization, a nation, or something more spiritual. The ultimate self-transcendence is to feel a part of the Universe, connected to and united with all people and all things, everywhere and throughout time. Few people reach that level of self-transcendence, except Jesus and the Buddha. But it is a goal towards which we can all strive.

Aside from the physiological and safety needs, a connection to God as you understand Them is important at all of the higher levels. People have different names for God: Adonai, the Trinity, Allah; the pantheon of Hindu gods; the Universe, the Source; and so forth. These are all ways of describing Something that transcends our ordinary experience. I am personally a Trinitarian Christian, but acknowledge the possibility, even the high likelihood, that most or all spiritual traditions are describing different aspects of the same ultimate Reality.

The problem is that we fight over different interpretations of that ultimate reality. We try to convince others either that they MUST subscribe to our interpretation in order to be in our community, or that they are forbidden from approaching our God because of some inherent quality of theirs. The pursuit of a connection to ultimate reality becomes a solitary journey, then, or people give up on the pursuit because they think it is blocked.

But it’s not. Nobody has the right to tell you that you are unworthy in God’s sight, except for God. Nobody has exclusive access to Truth. St. Augustine once said, “Si comprehendus, non est Deus,” which means “If you understand, it is not God.” Joy, peace, transcendence, and connection are found in the pursuit, not in any particular doctrine or definition.

Si comprehendus, non est Deus.
If you understand, it is not God.

St. Augustine

Pastor? Mentor? Teacher? Sherpa!

In the Christian tradition, leaders are normally called “pastor,” which derives from the Latin for shepherd. The implication is that the pastor knows where to go and guides the flock in that direction, like lost sheep being prodded and pushed and herded. The reality is that pastors know more about scripture and theology, and guide their flocks with love and care, but have no more direct access to the ultimate Truth than anyone else.

In many life settings and philosophical traditions, “mentors” lead protégés. The original model is Mentor, a character in the Odyssey who was entrusted with raising and guiding Odysseus’s son, Telemachus. There are many positive examples of mentorship. However, in its worst form, the relationship can be quite paternalistic as in the Odyssey, where the mentor claims superior knowledge, skill, and wisdom, and seeks to form the protégé into a copy, a “Mini-Me.” I often serve as a mentor within my limited sphere of engineering and academia, but would never claim such authority in the spiritual realm.

Jewish leaders are termed “rabbis,” or teachers. Any teacher has an area where they are experts and other areas where they are learners. I can accept being called “teacher” in my profession as an engineer. There are also specific topics within scripture and theology where I have enough expertise to guide others. When it comes to the broad outlines of the spiritual journey, though, what I know from my own journey can provide just one limited perspective. Oscar Wilde said, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” Developing spiritual depth and wisdom must come from experience, not knowledge transfer.

The Sherpas are an ethnic group in Nepal, India, and Tibet who live high in the Himalayas. Because of their extensive lived experience in that mountainous terrain, many mountain guides and bearers on Himalayan expeditions are Sherpas. As a result, “sherpa” has come to mean a person who helps you on your mountain journey. They may help carry burdens that you cannot. They may help you in an emergency, or go get help for you. They may know the right path to take, or they may rely on their instincts developed over years in the mountains to help you identify better and worse paths.

I see myself as a Thriving Sherpa. I cannot tell you how to thrive. I cannot tell you what to believe or how to behave. I can tell you what I know from my own study and experience, and help you figure out your own path. I can help you carry burdens—emotional, spiritual, relational—as you pursue self-actualization and self-transcendence. And like Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied Edmund Hillary on the first successful summit of Mount Everest, my reward is being a part of your triumph, your flourishing, your emergence as the best version of yourself who helps fill the world with love.

Queer Spirituality

I feel called to be a Thriving Sherpa for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. For too long, gay and transgender individuals have been told that they are inherently sinful and unworthy of God’s love. THIS IS CATEGORICALLY FALSE. There is nobody who is unworthy. Everyone is pure and holy at their center.

There are some relationships that are beautiful, joyful, and life-giving, and should be celebrated and affirmed.

There are some relationships that are abusive, exploitative, and life-denying, and should be ended.

The gender(s) of the participants is only incidental to whether a relationship is life-giving or life-denying. In fact, heterosexual relationships are more likely to be corrupted by gender dynamics inherited from patriarchy than same-sex relationships. I reject any theology or social framework that elevates and affirms a marriage in which the husband abuses the wife while denying or castigating a marriage between two loving men or two loving women.

The Divine Spark dwells in each person’s innermost being. There, with all of the externalities removed, we are all pure and good. At STL Pride 2015, a rabbi led a chant, “Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah hi.” “My God, the soul you breathe in me is pure and good.” That soul dwells within our human flesh. In some cases, there is a mismatch between the form of that perfect and beautiful soul and the outermost form of the flesh containing it. In some cases, we lack language to really describe the form of that soul. The closest terms we can come up with are things like “non-binary,” “genderfluid,” and “genderqueer.” These are all failings of our language and culture, not of the perfect and beautiful soul.

To be absolutely clear: I believe that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are equal before God. I believe that people of all genders are equal before God. It is our task to build a society in which healthy relationships can flourish, and people of all genders can flourish.

Patriarchy Is Bad. God Is Good.

I recognize that I write this all from a place of extreme privilege. I am a straight, cisgender, white man. I have never needed to contend with minority status due to my race, gender, or sexual orientation. It is incumbent on me to learn about the challenges that minorities of all kinds face in our society, and to work to alleviate them. Rather than forsaking my privilege, I strive to use it to elevate those who are on the margins because of their identity.

I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He was speaking of the ultimate end of history when we all know the Truth, the infinite Love that awaits us when all things are reconciled. God is good. The Universe is good. But MLK also recognized, as I do, that the moral arc does not bend on its own. It bends towards justice when those of us who have the ability to make a change in the world pursue justice, righteousness, and reconciliation.

So my calling is to help people wherever they are on their journey. For many years, I have sought to create an organization and a place where everyone can fulfill their love and belonging needs, LGBTQ+ Rolla. At the same time, I have been exploring the spiritual terrain and growing closer to God as I understand Them. Now I am stepping out to create a space where I can walk alongside people who are striving to fulfill their higher needs, as they recognize a need to be a part of something bigger than themselves, as big as the whole Universe.

Article published in the Phelps County Focus on July 3, 2025. Here’s a teaser:

What happens when we die?

Many, probably most, modern Christians believe that humanity is split between the saved and the damned. They differ on how someone gets saved—whether predestined or by freely accepting Jesus, for example. They differ on what happens to the damned—whether they are annihilated and cease to exist, or are kept alive in eternal conscious torment in a fiery hell. All of these variations are well-supported by scripture.

But I believe in an all-loving God, a just God, a forgiving God. I cannot accept a doctrine that assigns eternal, infinite consequences to our finite time on earth. If you believe in forever, then life is just a blink of an eye. There’s another option, …

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Yesterday, June 30, 2025, was a milestone in my life and, I hope, in the life of my community. Back in 2010, as I recall, Susan Murray prodded me down a path towards affirming and supporting the LGBTQ+ community. In 2013, my wife’s health crisis put a pause on progress, but by 2017 I was starting to think again about how I could best fulfill my calling to serve the LGBTQ+ community and help everyone flourish.

In 2019, I started putting things in action. Being straight, I didn’t have any idea what would best serve the LGBTQ+ community in Rolla, so I had lunch with a couple of gay acquaintances. The repeated message I received was that we needed a focal point. There are LGBTQ+ individuals everywhere, but too many of them think they are the only ones. They don’t realize how many peers they have and don’t have a way to find community.

Then the pandemic hit. After some dithering, I realized that COVID wasn’t going away anytime soon, so I might as well get on with life. I had connected with Onyx Russ, a nonbinary grad student, at a couple of campus events. We started talking about what we could do. LGBTQ+ Rolla was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in August 2020. Other people came and went, and eventually we decided to have some Zoom gatherings. Those went well, and then when the weather was nice enough, we started gathering in person in city parks.

Finally, in June 2021, we held our first Pride gathering at Schuman Park. I would have been satisfied with 30 people, but 80 showed up! That demonstrated and validated the message I had received: LGBTQ+ individuals are hungry for a way to connect with one another. Human connection is vital for human flourishing.

Since then, the organization has grown exponentially. Pride 2022 had about 200 people, so in 2023, we moved to the downtown festival lots. We added a drag show, which resulted in blowback and extended city council meetings for months. Fortunately, the furor died down, and now drag shows are accepted as normal entertainment. We continue to have drag at Pride and have hosted shows at S&T and at the local VFW post.

When the LGBTQ+ Rolla board of directors did its strategic planning for 2025, we decided to open a physical location. Shasta Johnson, our president, found a rental property that would work for us. We signed the lease in April and started renovations. Lots of people contributed to the work of turning a run-down, former tanning salon into a beautiful and functional space.

Finally, yesterday, we had a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Rolla Chamber of Commerce and opened to the public. I would say we had 75+ people in attendance. It was amazing! There is so much excitement about having a space where we can gather, host small events, open our affirming clothes closet, and more!

My personal calling is to live out the Gospel message that the kingdom of God is at hand! I believe that the kingdom of God is universal human flourishing. We all have physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational needs. It is my hope that the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center will be a place where people can experience true community, true connections. It is my hope that it will enable LGBTQ+ members of our community to flourish, to grow into the best version of themselves.

Yet I must remember that this is a milestone, not the end. Now the next phase of work begins: keeping the doors open, fighting bigotry in the community, managing the inevitable conflicts that will crop up as people from diverse backgrounds come together. But I am convinced that we will succeed if we keep focused on our mission: Affirming, Supportive, Visible Community.

Published April 17, 2025, by the Phelps County Focus. Based on John 13:1-17.

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This article is being published on Maundy Thursday, Jesus’s last day with all of his disciples and a critical turning point in the narrative arc of the Gospel of John.

The opening of the Gospel is the beautiful poem about the Word of God, the divine ordering principle of the universe who became flesh and dwelt among us. After Jesus is introduced to us through his baptism, the first half of the Gospel, often called the Book of Signs, describes miraculous events that crescendo.

The first sign of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom is at a wedding in Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine—a LOT of water, more than a hundred gallons!

His second sign was the healing of a royal official’s son.

He later fed a multitude, walked on water and healed two other men, including one born blind.

Finally, the story reaches a climax in chapter 11 when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

By now, at least some people had figured out who Jesus was. He declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Martha responds, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”

John is building his case. Each sign reveals a little bit more about Jesus’s divine nature. Jesus is godly. Jesus is God. JESUS IS GOD!

Jesus could not only heal the sick but also raise the dead! He was the source of all goodness and provision for the people. He had complete power over life and death, being the Word of God who was with God at the beginning, and who was God from the beginning. JESUS IS GOD!

But then on Maundy Thursday, we learn just what kind of God we worship….

CONTINUE READING AT PHELPS COUNTY FOCUS…

Published in the Phelps County Focus on February 13, 2025. Here’s a teaser!

I like steak. Medium-rare, some salt and pepper, maybe some butter. Usually, a ribeye or New York strip. Occasionally with grilled onions or roasted garlic to complement the flavor.

But when I was a kid, I didn’t like steak at all. Some cuts are too tough. You need to cut around the bone, fat, and gristle, and you also need to cut it into small enough bites. A bad cook can ruin a good steak, and even when cooked properly, there are parts that are chewy.

So instead, I ate hot dogs. Hot dogs are easy. No utensils needed. Every bite is exactly the same. If you’re in a hurry, you can even microwave a hot dog in less than a minute. Just don’t ask too many questions about what’s in it—bits and pieces from every part of the animal, all ground up and mushed together to make something tasty and vaguely meat-like.

As I grew up, a plain hot dog became less and less satisfying. To compensate, I piled on the toppings: ketchup (but definitely not in Chicago!), onions, relish, hot peppers. Other people pile on sauerkraut, chili, or cheese. The options are limitless. If you do it right, you can barely tell there’s a hot dog underneath all the toppings!

Some people treat the Bible in the same way. They….

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Published in Phelps County Focus on November 14, 2024. A meditation on Jonah after the presidential election.

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We all know the story about Jonah—or at least we think we do. Something about spending three days in the belly of a whale, right? Well, there’s a lot more to the story.

At the time, the Assyrian Empire was the bully in the neighborhood, perhaps like the Soviet Union in its heyday. They pioneered the practice of exiling the leaders of conquered nations. They were not nice people. So, God decided to destroy their capital, Nineveh.

But of course, God is merciful, so God called Jonah and told him to preach repentance in Nineveh. Jonah absolutely did not want to do that! So he fled, sailing fast in the opposite direction. But after a miraculous journey in a great fish, he ended up back on land and on the road to Nineveh. He realized that he had no choice but to go where God had sent him. When he arrived, he half-heartedly told the people of Ninevah what God had planned.

Jonah was BY FAR the most successful prophet after Moses. All the other prophets were ignored, killed, tortured, exiled, etc. But Nineveh heard Jonah’s warnings and immediately repented. It’s kind of a comical story—even the cattle wore sackcloth and ashes! As a result, God relented and showed them mercy.

Jonah was extremely successful—and that upset him. He did not want Nineveh to repent. He wanted God to destroy them. When God showed mercy, Jonah sat down and wished to die.

So often, we are like Jonah. We may say that we want people to change their hearts and minds, but our actions show our true feelings. We don’t really want to change our opponents into our allies—we want to destroy our enemies.

But God reminded Jonah that all of us are made in God’s image. All of us are God’s beloved children. All of us belong in God’s kingdom.

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