Series editor’s note: Throughout 2020, “Deeper understandings” will engage the ELCA’s commitment to authentic diversity. —Kathryn A. Kleinhans, dean of Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio The Freedom…
“What type of person do you want to be?” I was taken aback when asked this question during a college service-learning trip. Rather than focusing on what I should be…
“What I have to do is to honor this pilgrimage through life. And so I am this pilgrim who’s constantly amazed by this journey” —Paulo Coehlo I’ve long loved the…
I think this is almost invariably (note the tiny escape clause) an accurate statement: Lutheran pastors do not tell parishioners how to vote. Not only is this technically illegal but…
One thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three miles. That’s the distance between Lodi, Calif., and Los Fresnos, Texas. It’s a distance I drove twice with a father and his children—two little…
Editor’s note: This year the ELCA celebrates 50 years of Lutheran women’s ordination in the United States, 40 years of the ordination of Lutheran women of color and 10 years…
Bethlehem Lutheran Church, St. Charles, Ill. Children’s book author I started exploring church in college. I remember feeling incredibly awkward—not knowing the routine, having no sense of what was happening when…
I was once a guest preacher at a congregation celebrating Veterans Day during Sunday worship. The service began with a color guard carrying an American flag into the sanctuary—a new…
In the early 1980s, beginning at Mount Katahdin, I backpacked the length of the Appalachian Trail (2,100 miles) south from Maine to Georgia. Sometimes I’d go three days without seeing…
On June 29, 2018, I stood in front of 30,000 young people and confessed a heavy burden: I’m a recovering self-injurer. It’s not the first time I’d spoken those words,…
One Sunday in 2017, Alex Hoffner, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Tullahoma, Tenn., pulled aside then-15-year-old Colin Shuran after a worship service with a suggestion for a potential movie…
Editor’s note: This year the ELCA celebrates 50 years of Lutheran women’s ordination in the United States, 40 years of the ordination of Lutheran women of color and 10 years…
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