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Posts from the ‘Pastoral Ministry’ Category

Dec 18

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God is Born

Christmas at the jail is invariably a night of brutal dissonances. Kitschy decorations (Santas, elves, cardboard fireplaces, candy canes) labouring to add a bit of colour to drab concrete and plastic. Christmas carols competing for auditory space with the squawk and buzz of intercoms and the clanging of heavy doors. Ornate words about hope and joy in a place where despair and cynicism come more naturally. In the Christian life, there is always a gap between the hope we proclaim and the reality we experience. This is life in between Christ’s advents. At the jail, the gap just seems exponentially wider. Read more

Dec 10

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To Not Feel Lost in the World

A friend recently directed my attention to an episode of CBC’s The Current where the subject matter was Gen Z’s return to Christianity. Many are noticing that the kids are coming back to church. At least some of them. We’re not exactly talking a tidal wave here, but certainly a steady trickle. What on earth is going on, the venerable CBC wanted to know? Read more

Nov 19

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Wednesday Miscellany: On Sex and Transcendence

Whenever a topic or cluster of topics keep showing up in different areas of my life and ministry, I eventually decide it’s worth paying attention to and, if possible, try to write something about it. When I can’t quite seem to come up with a solid piece of unified writing, I default to a “Miscellany” post. So, what follows is not necessarily a coherent argument, just a few short reflections and observations picked up over the last little while. Read more

Nov 4

Forty Chickens

Hope builds a bridge across the abyss into which reason cannot look. It can hear an undertone to which reason is deaf. Reason does not recognize the signs of what is coming, what is not yet born.

— Byung-Chul Han, The Spirit of Hope

*** 

We were talking about hope out at the jail yesterday. A few guys had shared about how they desperately needed hope, to believe that there could be something different in their future, something besides the same old habits, the endless tired returning to the same endlessly tired dead-ends. One guy looked up with a half-grin that was somewhere between cynical, mischievous, and dejected. “I don’t got no hope anymore. I stole forty chickens and there’s no future for me.” Read more

Oct 21

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On Slop, Sadness, and Shared Humanity

Any given Monday at the jail contains no small number of sadnesses. I feel sad when I see grown men and women who can barely read. Sad when I see inmates being yelled at. Sad when I hear loud crude conversations out the door as the inmates make their way to chapel. Sad when I read incident reports. Sad when I hear stories of the damage inflicted by damaged people. Sad when I see inmates whose birth years are earlier than my kids’. Sad when I hear people tell me that jail is the only place where they feel safe from themselves and their addictions. Sad when I hear about the casual chaos and violence in which so many lives are (mal)formed. Read more

Oct 14

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The Faith that Makes Well

The gospel reading for this past Sunday (Thanksgiving Sunday, here in Canada) was Luke 17:11-19. In it, Jesus heals ten lepers who cry out to him for mercy. Only one returns to give thanks (a Samaritan), and Jesus commends him for it. Connections between lectionary texts and the secular calendar don’t really come much more obvious than this, I suppose. Don’t be like the nine ungrateful lepers who pranced off into their more hopeful futures with scarcely a thought for their Healer. Be like the Samaritan. Make sure you give thanks because this makes Jesus happy. Read more

Sep 9

The Devil Made Me Do It

In contrast to my expectations—and against my most stubborn and misguided intentions—spiritual warfare was on the agenda again at the jail yesterday. I had a safer topic in mind, but no sooner had I began my talk than we were wandering in the thickets. Read more

Sep 2

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On Mental and Spiritual Health

For at least the last few decades, I have regularly encountered a shift in how Christians employ the categories of mental health and spiritual health. I can’t remember precisely when this shift started, sometime in my twenties or thirties probably. Often someone would share some story of a clumsy pastoral interaction where they came to the church with a problem—say trouble in a marriage or a difficult child or abuse of some kind or some traumatic experience that was proving debilitating—and the pastor left the impression that all you really had to do was pray the problem away. Read more

Jul 12

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On Doing Our Duty

I attended the funeral of my childhood pastor yesterday. He was well into his nineties, had lived a good, long life whose shape was defined by faith and family. I didn’t know him well. I’m not sure that knowing the pastor well would have even been on my childhood radar as something desirable or even possible. The pastor was kind of like the librarian or the Zamboni driver at the ice rink—someone who was just always there. His sermons were not particularly riveting, nor did he exude charisma from the pulpit. He was just this stable given in my life. Actually, I should check that pernicious word “just.” In a world where so many lives are characterized by instability, chaos and confusion, where so much communication is reduced to marketing and manipulation, where so many relationships are temporary and self-serving, we could probably all use a few more stable unspectacular givens in our lives. Read more

Jul 8

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All Things to All People

I couldn’t help but cringe along this morning as I read an article by Giles Fraser on the search for a replacement for Justin Welby as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The piece is ominously titled “Anglicanism’s Poisoned Chalice.” According to Fraser, it’s a job that nobody with any sense would want.

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Jun 18

9 Comments

Blessed Are the Guilty Who Have Nowhere to Go

Many Mondays as I make the short drive to the jail, I listen to a song by Jon Guerra called “The Kingdom of God.” It’s a beautiful song by a gifted songwriter (Guerra’s most recent album, “Jesus,” has been a mainstay in my headphones since it was released during Lent). The song is basically a creative version of the Beatitudes set to music (with a bit of Psalm 23 mixed in). I listen on Mondays primarily because of one line that hit me like a freight train the first time I heard it and almost never fails to leave me with a lump in my throat: “Blessed are the guilty who have nowhere to go.” Read more

Jun 9

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The Flower Thief

I think it was around day ten or eleven of the Camino when we found ourselves talking to two Estonian women on a sun-baked terrazza near Pontevedra, Spain. It had been a long hot day of walking, and the patio appeared like an oasis as we emerged from a heavily treed, hilly section that seemed to go on and on. Rarely had the sound of laughing voices and clinking glasses sounded so welcome! Read more

May 9

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Friday Miscellany (On Conscription)

The last thing I did before heading out on sabbatical was spend a few days at a Roman Catholic retreat centre in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I was there for a retreat with a group of pastors from our denomination. The setting was idyllic, the hospitality warm, and the sessions meaningful. We were led by a Catholic spiritual director who invited us to consider our various journey, vocations, and lives through the lens of “pilgrimage.” My ears obviously perked up at that as I will be heading off on a very non-metaphorical pilgrimage in a few days (walking the Camino de Santiago, Portuguese Way). In one of the sessions, she used a phrase that has stuck with me: “Sometimes our pilgrimages are not chosen; sometimes we are conscripted.” Read more

Apr 29

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I Had a Bad Dream

I felt a touch of weariness as I stared at the request form on my desk at the jail recently. A woman had seemingly requested every item that could conceivably come from the chaplaincy department. A bible, correspondence courses, bookmarks, address book, diary, notebook, colouring sheets, word searches, a rosary, calendar, inspirational verses, pencil crayons, stamped envelopes… She almost ran out of room on the form. Near the end, almost as an afterthought, she wrote, “Oh yeah, and I would also like to talk to a chaplain. I’ve been going through some hard things I want someone to pray for me.” I grabbed as many of the items as we had and trudged off to the women’s unit. Read more

Apr 10

“It’s Been a While Since I’ve Done the Church Thing”

I had a conversation this morning with a young woman in a bad place. Abusive boyfriend, unstable living arrangements, struggling to afford groceries. I offered her a grocery card, my best wishes. Prayer. She looked at me sheepishly at the mention of prayer, meeting my gaze for almost the first time since our conversation began. “Thanks… You know, it’s been a while since I’ve really done the church thing.” “Well, no time like the present,” I said. “You’re always welcome.” She said she’d think about it. A lot of people say they’ll think about it. Read more

Mar 18

3 Comments

The Grace Guy

I was asked to give a last-minute presentation at a regional denominational gathering last weekend. The guest speaker was ill, so a bunch of pastors were tapped to plug the gaps. 2025 has been designated as the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement so this was a focus throughout the weekend. How we mark these things is, of course, at least somewhat arbitrary. The people who make such decisions have designated the beginnings of our branch of the Christian tree as the date of the first believer’s baptism in Zurich in 1525. But of course, threads of Anabaptist thought run throughout Christian history. And to whatever extent “Anabaptism” can be spoken of as a monolithic movement, the 2025 version looks very different than whatever was bubbling up in 1525. History is poorly behaved and stubbornly resists our desire for clean lines and unambiguous markers. Thus, has it ever been, I suppose. Read more

Mar 7

6 Comments

Where Can I Flee?

Around the circle at the jail recently we were talking about the God who meets us at our lowest point. It’s not particularly difficult for the guys to think about their lowest point. It’s not exactly a remote hypothetical for many for them. They’re living it. They’re at the bottom. They know precisely what most people think of them—they often think it of themselves. They are well aware of their weaknesses and proclivities, their addictions and destructive habits, their character flaws and worst impulses. They know who they are, they know where they are, and they know why. Read more

Dec 12

5 Comments

Somebody Save Me

My son is a lover of music. He (annoyingly easily) learned guitar and piano as a teenager, but as a young adult his tastes have migrated more toward the electronic, and towards genres that his dad doesn’t necessarily share his appreciation for (EDM, hip-hop, even, somewhat bewilderingly and incongruously, jazz!). I often scratch my head and protect my ears from what loudly drifts up from the basement. Thus has it ever been with fathers and sons, I suppose. Read more

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