pastorfrogge

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSSeptember 5, 2025Years ago, I remember hearing Archbishop Desmond Tutu preach at the General Assembly of our denomination. His sermon was based on Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God…” Actually, that is where he stopped. He did not move on to the next few words that speak of God creating, but instead, stuck with this notion that God existed before there was existence. It is sort of

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSSeptember 4, 2025I don’t know why, but I have had a hard time writing this Etching. I have experienced moments of inspiration, started to type, only to shake my head and say to myself, “Well, that’s nonsense.” Now I’m pretty sure I have written a few Etchings over the years that were actually published, and upon reading them, you thought to yourself, “Well, that’s nonsense.” If it’s

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSSeptember 3, 2025Twenty-one years ago on this day, Donna and I arrived in Guatemala City to complete the adoption process and bring our eleven-month-old child home. What was to be a three-month process turned into a nearly yearlong and very painful journey. We traveled three months earlier to visit the child that had been assigned to us, yet while we were there on our visit, we learned

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSSeptember 1, 2025There are times when a sermon is still this loose and nebulous idea, and all the pieces in my mind seem to fit together in what I am certain will be a 16-18 minute message. And then it begins to take shape, and the idea becomes a sermon, and what I thought would be the final product is in fact about 40 minutes long. In

ECCLESIOLOGIC AL ETCHINGSAugust 31, 2025In her book, Sisters in the Wilderness, Womanist theologian Delores Williams writes about the wilderness and how frightening it can be. Yet she goes on to talk about survival in the wilderness requiring God-given resources like resiliency, hope, and determination if life and faithfulness are to be sustained in the face of fear. I appreciate how she does not dismiss fear as a reality,

ECCLESIOLOGIC AL ETCHINGSAugust 30, 2025It might be because school is starting, but I woke up about 30 minutes before my alarm yesterday and had a momentary panic as I thought it was Sunday. The sermon was not done, I had not sent out the worship material to the worship participants, and it was about 45 minutes later than I usually get up on Sundays. I’m sure the wave

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSAugust 29, 2025I won’t go into the details, but yesterday afternoon, I set down the things I was holding in my hands so I could unlock a door for some folks. There was a piece of wood where I was setting down the items, and I got a rather large splinter under my fingernail. Ouch! Double ouch!! As splinters go, it was pretty big. Yet in the

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSAugust 28, 2025I am once again heartsick by the violence all around us. The shooting in Minneapolis grieves me to the bone, but the violence is not isolated to that one event here and there. Gaza continues to experience horrific and unnecessary violence, so much of it perpetrated against children. The ongoing war in Ukraine is senseless as more and more civilians appear to be targeted. The

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGSAugust 27, 2025My friend, Rev. Michael Dunn, posted an old quote from the late Bishop John Shelby Spong. The Bishop said,  “God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist. I honor my tradition. I walk through my tradition. But I don’t believe my tradition defines God. It only points me to God.”  Like a lot of