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  • Talkin’ About My Generation ✓
    Around this time last year the Pew Research Center published a major study called Religion Among the Millennials. I downloaded the report and read it the instant the news flashed across my computer screen. My interest comes from the fact that I…
  • Quiet Kids
    If you went to church camp, you may remember it fondly – friends, games, singing in chapel and swimming in a pool or lake. Or, like me, your feelings about camp may be mixed. You loved the singing in chapel, enjoyed some of the games, but the fir…
  • The Fifth [Meatless] Friday of Lent
    Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others. Amen.  -The Blessing of a Marriage, the Book of Common Prayer I grew up thinking only nuns could be married to God. Now I think t…
  • The Hunger Games
    The highly anticipated movie The Hunger Games opens this Friday in theaters across the nation. Based on a series of young adult novels by the same name, this movie reflects on scarcity, individualism, and an ethos of distrust. In this blog post from …
  • The Fourth [Meatless] Friday of Lent
    I have always had an interest in the faith practices of the Amish community, and find certain aspects of the culture surprising and even counter-intuitive. The degree of freedom offered to Amish children—both in decisions surrounding marriage and…
  • What's Your Next Step?
    What are you doing after graduation? Do you remember this question? Did you dread it like I did? I confess that 15 years ago I was one of those college seniors who had no idea what I was going to do with my life after leaving the safe confines o…
  • Saints Among Us
    By the end of the baptism, confirmations, and receptions, Martha leans like a book against a shelf. She has stood this whole time, while 10-day-old David enters into the household of God. Her walker sits in the aisle, and she clutches onto th…
  • Talking to Kids about Faith
    It was hard to choose which class to take of the three offered this fall at our Center at St. Andrew’s. Dr. Ann Redding who was defrocked by Bishop Wolff of Rhode Island for becoming a Muslim is offering, “Making Peace with Islam: An Introducti…
  • What a Relief!
    The new youth minister is finally arriving! I know it can feel like such a relief when the new person is starting after your church has spent months, and in some cases more than a year, searching for the perfect youth director. But before you ha…
  • Why Young Adults Leave Church
    Does your congregation welcome doubt? What’s being taught about sexuality from the pulpit and in formation classes? Do your youth and young adult groups explore the deeper questions of faith, or do these tend toward superficiality? While many Ep…
  • The Youth Minister Left. Now What?
    Many volunteer youth workers are left with this question when their youth director/minister has been fired or has resigned unexpectedly. This time of transition can be sad, confusing, and frustrating. It’s often a time for grieving. And though ev…
  • What's in a Name
    Some stories we hold close, keeping them in our mental keepsake drawer. Others we keep in the wings, waiting for the perfect moment: meeting of the daughter’s first boyfriend, revenge when she’s acting like petulant teen. This story h…
  • A Children's Place
    Episcopalians aren’t the only people God trusts to take the summer off. At our church, the nursery attendant goes home from college, and the kids join the congregation for the whole service. During the program year, the nursery is staffed…
  • Wanted: Authenticity
    Summer is novel reading time. Trapped by the heat, I try to stay as still as possible, book in-hand, under a tree or nestled up to my AC wall unit. Two weeks ago I survived one of New York’s hottest days by reading Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from th…
  • Back to the Garden
    When we picked a theme for our Vacation Bible School this summer we naturally gravitated to Green. Our parish has made ecology a major theme during my five years in charge, so it was only natural that we took our young people down that path this su…
  • Mambo Sawa Sawa
    (All is well…..I have goodness in my heart.)   Today, I want to share the story of Grace Art Camp, a ministry offered by Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon.  For me, growing up, summer meant camp. Among my earliest memori…
  • Work Hard, Play Hard
    I am writing from New Orleans where I am chaperoning a youth mission trip through the Beacon of Hope program founded by St. Paul’s, New Orleans. It is my fourth trip to the city to help rebuild after Katrina. Once again this incredible, tragic, b…
  • The Story that Lives
    Did you sense it? This past weekend marked the end of an era. I admit I didn’t notice at first. But as I sat around the kitchen table with our convent/farm interns last Thursday night, I began to realize that the release of Harry Potter and the D…
  • Editor's Letter July
    One of my earliest memories of church is of the kindergarten room in the basement of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Wakefield, Mass. It is Epiphany, and there is a large felt board on the wall with figures representing the Magi’s visit to the baby Je…
  • Giving Church the 'Super 8' Treatment
    I want to Super 8 the church experience of my youth. J.J. Abram’s cinematic homage to Stephen Spielberg relishes in nostalgia without overdoing the saccharine. We caught the flick on date night, and it prompted many a tale over dinner about t…
  • Led by Children
    The nursery renovation began with a 5-year-old. Our church is nearly 200 years old, and some of the toys in the nursery surely witnessed the first service. We even considered carbon-dating. But to be honest, our attention was on the adu…
  • Marketing 101
    Guess who is running Vacation Bible School at my church this summer? Yours truly. It gives me the opportunity to get back to basics on marketing that I used to advise other churches to use when I was the Missioner for Communications Ministry at the…
  • Ginormous
    When I saw Ephraim taking pictures of Ms. Scott, my heart just melted,” said Lisa, the organizer of my congregation’s second annual “Ginormous Flea Market.” We were standing by a tree in the small garden watching a neighborhood boy run the …
  • Raising PKs
    My daughter was only four months old the first time I truly understood the challenge of raising PKs – priest kids. I held her in my arms as we waited by the door for my husband to lock up the church. Her little face peaked out from a caterpil…
  • The Cacophony of Children
    I’m a firm believer: Children should be seen and heard in church. About eight years ago, we started an Episcopal church in a fast-growing area with few community buildings. Our only option for a meeting site was a small, one-room township h…
  • Giving our Church to our Children for Easter
    My earliest church memory is from Easter 1960: I sang in the Cherubs’ choir at both the 9:00 am and 11:00 am services at William Street Methodist Church in Delaware, Ohio. I remember distinctly the musty smell of the basement room where moms hand…
  • Where are the Young Adults?
    Maybe it was the lemon cake, but by the end of Friday’s dinner at Julian House in Chicago the constant hand wringing about young adults and the future of the Episcopal Church seemed a distant memory. Where are young adults in the Episcopal Church? …
  • Fat Tuesday
    The Church instituted Ash Wednesday and the people responded with Mardi Gras. The church established All Saints Day and the people offered up Halloween. Easter is the church’s highest holy day but the people love Christmas even more. Who’s in c…
  • A Tapestry of Ministries
    It was a week of snow, ice, wind, and rain. Numerous flight cancellations and airport closures laid havoc across the country. Add to this job layoffs, pay cuts, and budget struggles. Not to mention planning for Lent and preparing a Sunday sermon. …
  • State of the Union, State of the Church
    The State of the Union address is a yearly snapshot of where our president thinks our nation stands. The State of the Episcopal Church report published every three years is a snapshot of where our church stands. In his address, President Obama …
  • Jesus and Santa
    Playing Santa helps me understand Jesus a little better. This isn't a debate about the commercialization of Christmas or whether we’ve spoiled our kids beyond all hope.And I know there’s so much more to my relationship with Christ than un…
  • Child's Eye View of Church
    We are one of the lucky Episcopal Churches to be blessed with an abundance of children. So far this fall over 150 kids have visited our Sunday School. This means we find 100 roles for children in our Annual Christmas pageant. The buzz around th…
  • St. Nicholas: Connecting the Past and the Present
    St. Nicholas stopped by our church last night. Although today is the feast day for the bishop, our church celebrated his vigil on Sunday evening with crafts, cookie decorating and lots of young kids squealing and chasing each other around the t…
  • Back to basics
    The first semester of our experiment ends tonight. My church is a typical county-seat congregation in the foothills of Appalachia. If only Christmas Eve were our typical attendance on Sunday mornings, we’d be a packed 150. Instead, most Sun…
  • What Can One Person Do?
    A lot. Ask Eric Hillegas, former associate minister at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Upham’s Corner. Today’s new Fieldwork posting begins the story of how Eric is bringing his vision of free tutoring programs to an inner city neighborhood.…
  • And the Gold Goes to ...
    E-mail addresses are gold. By Olympic award standards, the bronze medal goes to snail mail addresses. Cell phone numbers snag the silver. But e-mail addresses rise to the top of the podium. Managing the database for a congregation…
  • Hollow me out
    When he didn’t win the pumpkin contest, I felt the tears sting. For most of Saturday, we worked on Cinderella’s coach, pulling the slime out of the pumpkin, carving windows, fashioning a door (that really opened!) and decorating the coach as…
  • GodSquad met at our house.
    The church van picked up the dozen or so students from the elementary school and brought them to our backyard, the kids starving for mid-afternoon snacks and a place to run off their energy.    After several tries to settle the group, we starte…