The Progressive Reverend

After years of preaching, teaching, and doing church, I have found myself coming back to an embarrassingly simple question: What does it actually mean to follow Jesus? You would think I would have this figured out by now. I don't. I grew up in an Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Christianity I experienced was very different from the Christianity I understand and live today. As a child, following Jesus felt like following rules. There were things you did and things you didn't do. There was sin. There was judgment. And somewhere underneath it all was the very real possibility of hell. Following Jesus meant being good. Being obedient. Believing the right things. And, perhaps most importantly, not getting it wrong. That understanding of faith stayed with me for a long time. It took me years to understand that following Jesus might be very different. And now, after seminary and ordination and several years of ministry, after hundreds of sermons and more Bible studies than I coul...

  This week, I overheard a comment about some of the changes happening at Parkdale. The suggestion was that they were all my ideas. I will be honest. It stayed with me. Not because I expect everyone to agree with every idea, or because I need credit for what is happening. It stayed with me because this church has never belonged to one person. Its life has always been shaped by people who cared enough to offer their time, their questions, their imagination, and their love. More than four years ago, Parkdale’s Council appointed a Strategic Planning Group to listen and imagine where God might be leading us. They gathered input from the congregation, Council, and committees. Together, they asked: Who are we? What is God calling us to do? How do we live out our commitment to building connections, living faith, and acting for justice? The plan that emerged named hopes for strengthening lay leadership, using our building in new ways, deepening our welcome, developing partnerships, ...

Lately, I have been walking around Parkdale, noticing things. The kitchen is shining. And I mean shining. After a long summer of coffee, camps, meals, meetings, children, and all the beautiful mess of a well-used building, a couple of volunteers spent hours cleaning it from top to bottom. Outside, the benches and bridge have a fresh coat of paint. What looked tired a few weeks ago looks cared for again. Another volunteer has spent endless hours waiting for contractors to arrive. And while he waits, he finds things to fix. There is always something to fix. This is, after all, a church. Over the past few weeks, I have watched people give an extraordinary amount of time to this place. And I keep thinking about how much of the community is built this way. Quietly. A paintbrush in someone's hand. A cloth across a counter. A loose hinge tightened. A pot of coffee made before anyone else arrives. None of it is glamorous. All of it matters. Parkdale simply could not be the community it is ...