A Gathering to Envision, Encourage, and Energize Renewing Mainline Congregations

Come join Diana, along with speakers Phyllis Tickle, Marcus Borg, Tony Jones, Barbara Brown Taylor, Sam Lloyd, and Michael Battle for a two day celebration of what's right about mainline congregations! In addition to great plenaries, many of the pastors involved in Diana's project on vital mainline congregations and featured in Christianity for the Rest of Us will share stories and wisdom from their church communities. Join us for a refreshing, hope-filled time of learning, play, friendship, and worship.

This week, Christians around the world begin Lent – the 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and repentance leading to Easter.

In seminary, one of my friends eagerly awaited his yearly celebration of Lent, calling it his “favorite church season.” Since Lent starts with a morbid reminder of human mortality – “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” – I always wondered if he needed therapy more than ashes on his forehead. As Christmas faded into fond memory, I dreaded Lent’s approach. Only it stood between Easter and me. Forty days of guilt whenever I ate chocolate.

Diana Butler Bass has an essay on leadership in a new book from the Alban Institute, Leadership in Congregations. "This new book in Alban’s Harvesting the Learnings Series gathers the collected wisdom of over 10 years of Alban research and reflection on what it means to be a leader in a congregation, how our perceptions of leadership are changing, and exciting new directions for leadership in the future..."

This evening’s scriptures open our diocesan convention with a gentle challenge, offering us a chance to reflect on why we are here and what God is calling us, as a community, to be and do. When praying through these readings, which were assigned to me, I was tempted to preach on mission. Two of the church’s great mission texts are here: the wonderful passage on Isaiah, “Here am I; send me!” and the Matthew passage “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Indeed, I remember hearing these two passages in a sermon in 1979—I attended a national mission conference sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Urbana, Illinois.

I hope it isn’t entirely frivolous to take note of the untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith – although I suspect some God’s Politics readers might think it odd for a Christian blogger to pay respect to the passing of a former Playboy centerfold and tabloid celebrity.