This week I: welcomed two new members into the congregation, commemorated 20 saints, joined 45 others in a really great Harvest Party, learned about my top 5 leadership themes (Connectedness, Strategic, Empathy, Intellection, Responsibility), learned a lot about industrial motors on my first Take Your Pastor to Work visit, contemplated the earthiness of the Holy Spirit, studied Jesus’ series of dinners with the Pharisees in … Continue reading This Week in Ministry
This week ministry included… holding a baby…feeling him produce oxytocin in my brain. conversations about ministry in the midst of gentrification, in which I felt especially competent. persevering in a public presentation that required 32 pitchers…we found enough. sharing a personal pain somewhat publicly and finding it to be okay. talking about and preparing for All Saints’s Day…a really great holy day. It’s been a good … Continue reading This Week in Ministry
I was applying for a job when I sought the recommendation of a colleague whom I deeply admired. He agreed and later invited me to his office to show me what he wrote. It was embarrassing. One great thing after another…so much I hardly recognized who he was talking about. He asked me what I thought and I replied “Don’t you have any reservations?” He said, … Continue reading Inspirations: My Sour Story
I am trying to be a better pastor. How does one do that? What makes a good pastor? How does one quantify such an amorphous position? Really, almost all of it is subjective. The job description is ridiculous and unobtainable. Most of what I’m expected to do is not even in the job description: be nice, be caring, don’t get angry, be available, don’t be … Continue reading Inspirations: The Pennant Wall
This is a tale of two Family Leaves. Paid family leave changed my life. It allowed the most hallowed moment of my life to make me a better person. I am forever grateful to be employed by an organization who answered the paid family leave question decades ago. And yet, I experienced the anxiety that many Americans are expressing now after President Obama entered the conversation during his … Continue reading Paid Family Leave and My Experience in The United Methodist Church
Without seeming to notice the small fires still burning around the property, [my grandfather] went up to my father, took his hand, and said “Kopf hoch, mein Junge, blick nach vorn!” “Keep your head up, my boy, look forward!” Then he turned, walked directly back to the waiting car, and left. A few days later he died quietly. –from Theory U: Leading from the Future as … Continue reading Church Development and Theory U: How Past Self and Future Self Meet
I am following WordPress.com’s Blogging 101 course. Here is the assignment for September 15 “Introduce Yourself” My name is Christopher Gudger-Raines. I blog to collect my thoughts. I blog to write, as a discipline and an artform. I blog to hash out ideas and concerns. My blog has had several iterations over the years and has rarely had much of a following. I think it is … Continue reading Who Am I and Why Am I Here (Blogging 101)
Leading worship has become one humiliation after another. From trying to avoid critical people to trying to remember everyone’s name to remembering all the things you forgot to trying to get kids to think I’m cool (didn’t I fail at that enough in high school) to bearing one’s soul again as the clock shouts “Too Long” to realizing you messed up the bulletin to making … Continue reading Saturday Night, 12 hours From the Pulpit
The Mountain Vista Moment of 2013…A Son is Born In the run-up to the due date, I was, admittedly, hoping for another daughter. A. has been such a delight and I was nervous about having a boy. Since we waited to find out the gender of our second-born, I was calm but uncertain. Wow, was I wrong. What a delightful and charming little guy we … Continue reading A Mountainous 2013
Lately, I have really enjoyed the teaching ministries in my charge. We have a covenant group reading Richard Foster’s classic Prayer. The participants are smart and curious, a real treat to be with. This week we also began an afternoon study on Genesis. I was delightfully surprised by the number of participants. It is very encouraging to take the time to prepare a lesson and … Continue reading The Teaching Church
deeplyplaid.com 