Bil Aulenbach When I entered the ministry in 1957, there was no such thing as a volunteer priest in the Episcopal Church. (Roman Catholic priests didn’t receive a salary, but their church gave them everything else.) On my first assignment, the church housed me and gave me an old car, medical benefits, a retirement fund, and $2,400 … Read more
Dave asks, I went to an Episcopal church (someone said it was a “high church”) and watched as the priest kept kissing things: the altar, the Bible before and after he read it, and vestments when he was changing them. Then he started swinging an incense pot (my eyes didn’t like the smoke) and genuflected … Read more
My wife and I start almost every day with a power walk for an hour or so. After sixty-four years, she didn’t need to hear me pontificate anymore, so we thought, “Let’s listen to audiobooks.” One was Jon Meachem’s And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (2022), the story of Lincoln from … Read more
Joan asks, Is there anyone who answers prayers? Sixty-six years ago, in my second year of seminary, after a tragic accident in which my best friend was killed, I was forced to abruptly deal with this issue when a priest came into my hospital room the next day and asked, “What did you and Brad … Read more
For months, I found myself unhappy and sad, occasionally morphing into mad. I didn’t see any hope of preventing the forty-fifth president from becoming the forty-seventh. Trump’s Project 2025 (his takeover plans) is extremely scary. An unSupreme Court seemed to be the Christian Nationalist’s answered prayer. With Project 2025 comes the end of our democracy … Read more
Are you better off than you were in 2020? I am! But I never hear or read about others sharing my reasons. Folks seem to want to talk only about inflation, the cost of living, and the border. For me, inflation is a cyclical issue, and it doesn’t matter who’s in charge; it will happen … Read more
When it comes to the churches of the future, the stereotypical images of a church with a pitched roof, steeple, and cross on top will be gone for a variety of reasons: (1) the facilities of the future will house folks from the interfaith community because no one faith dominates; (2) the churches of old … Read more
Joan asks, In your blog post “A Peek at the Future Church,” you list some of your futuristic ideas. My question is, How does one go from what the church is today to becoming the church of the future? I think the real question might be, Is the church ready for change—a big change? My … Read more
In my series about the church in the future, I discussed the power of working together with ecumenical and interfaith communities. Mutual cooperation can be a game-changer. Let me share an example. A young Vietnamese man came to our church and attended one of my classes. When he was growing up, religion was not a … Read more
In the New Testament, Armageddon is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgment.” I’m not into eschatological conspiracy nonsense, but I see November 5, 2024, our Election Day, as a day when our country has its last battle between a democracy (good) and an … Read more