The Rod and Staff

Writings from a shepherd of Christ's flock

20 Years: Properly Humbled

December 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Twenty years ago today, Rachael and I were married in Conyers, GA. Surrounded by family and friends, we made our vows on the same platform where Rachael’s parents made theirs 28 years earlier. The picture below gives a fairy tale feel to the event. It is not inaccurate. While plenty of things in our lives have been difficult, we have lived happily ever after.

Speaking for myself, I sensed in that room a relief among those who knew me best that I had found such a tremendous person of character, integrity, depth, wisdom, and devotion to Jesus with whom I could become a more whole person. It’s not that I needed to be tamed—I was always the compliant firstborn who followed the rules and didn’t give my parents any trouble. It’s not that I needed to be motivated—I was driven in my seminary studies and my pursuit of pastoral ministry. It’s that, like everyone, I have blind spots. And I needed someone near enough to me to point them out.  [ . . . ]  [read more]

When Chaos Floods Your World

September 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments

During the season’s first Monday Night Football, a matchup between the Bills and the Jets, the camera paused on a healthy, smiling young man on the Bills sideline. It was Damar Hamlin, the Bills safety who, just over eight months ago, collapsed on the field after making a routine tackle. Like millions who were watching that January game, I stared in shock at the television as an ambulance drove onto the field and 65,000 fans in the stadium were silenced by this inexplicable and entirely unanticipated event. A healthy, strong, 24-year-old professional athlete had just dropped like a rag doll onto the field. 

It was only natural to feel a range of emotions as I saw Hamlin alive and in good spirits, from joy that he is back on the team, ready to play, to a nervous remembrance that his near-death experience could happen to anyone. There is a chaos in our world. It is usually held at bay by the limited control we exercise over nature and our resources. But when chaos intrudes into our regularly scheduled programming, it leaves us wondering when it will happen again. [ . . . ]  [read more]

Where Can the Lonely Pastor Go?

December 6, 2022 / / 0 Comments

The Gospel Coalition published a version of this article on September 26, 2022.

Last fall I reached a saturation point of loneliness in ministry. I felt achingly, painfully alone. My body let me know it every time I was at church. For two months I could not focus on sermon prep, though preaching has been my ministry passion since the late 90s. Unable to function in my role, I took an emergency Sabbatical and quietly planned to walk away from the pastorate. [ . . . ]  [read more]

The Sting of Death

April 20, 2022 / / 2 Comments

When we talk about the early 2020s in decades to come, those younger than us may be surprised to learn that death never lost its sting, at least, not in the particulars. “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Allegedly Joseph Stalin said that, a man who created plenty of tragedies and statistics in his generation. As our generation’s horror—the COVID-19 pandemic—nears its statistic of a million deaths in the United States, this loss en masse has done nothing to inure us to the single serving stories of the end of life.

Yesterday we learned that Roger McGee, Minister of Music at Alexandria First Baptist Church, was released from the equipment keeping his body alive and into the glorious presence of Jesus. Or perhaps he was already there once his brain functioning ceased. I don’t know how it works exactly. We asked the same questions when Silvia Escamilla lay at INOVA Fairfax a month and a half ago on a breathing machine. Silvia, in her mid-30s, was there because of a brain aneurysm. Roger, in his mid-60s, was at a family cookout the Friday before Holy Week and had a choking episode. Now they—by which I mean their spirits, that intangible essence that defines them more than hair color, country of origin, or occupation—are with Jesus. [ . . . ]  [read more]

Highland Clans, the Greatest Generation, and Black History Month: An Invitation to Pursue the Fuller Story

February 2, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Recently I learned about “sloinneadh” (pronounced SLO-ny-ug), the ancient Celtic practice of naming ancestors before battle. According to Alistair Moffat’s The Highland Clans, as the warriors stood in formation with weapons in hand, waiting for the enemy, they would recite their genealogies—I am Ian, son of Donald, son of Malcom, son of Kenneth, etc. In doing so they remembered that they fought not only for themselves on that day but in the shadow of all who had come before them, without whom they would not exist. The thought of my McAlpine, McMillen, Sinclair, and Sutherland forebears naming 20 generations of their own ancestry inspires me beyond expression.

This inspiration, sadly, was paired with deflation as I read Moffat’s book. I learned that much of what we think of as “Scottish” is more commercialized myth based on Sir Walter Scott novels than actual history. It’s unlikely that highlanders actually wore knee-length kilts or assigned particular tartan patterns to particular clans. The clans rarely got along and only occasionally laid down their violent rivalries to fight the English together. The history is a mixed bag. There is treachery and tragedy; noble causes and narcissistic power struggles. In short, they were imperfect people living imperfectly toward one another. Learning the fuller story deromanticized the vision of Scotland I had inhaled growing up in the American South. [ . . . ]  [read more]

I have election protesters and ‘Never Trumpers’ in my pews. How can we move forward together?

October 26, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Religion News Service published this article of mine on January 26, 2021. I have shared a preview below. The full article can be found here.

I stepped into the pulpit on Jan. 10 feeling an extraordinary weight. Four days earlier, 11 miles from our church, some of those protesting the certification of the presidential election broke through glass, beat police with American flags and precipitated the first incursion into the U.S. Capitol building since the War of 1812. [ . . . ]  [read more]

Curse of Ham

October 26, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I wrote these articles for United? We Pray in December 2020. Below is the introduction. You can read the full articles here – Part 1, Part 2.

When I started researching teaching about the “curse of Ham,” I thought I was wading into a legitimate theological debate, a back-and-forth of exegetically and hermeneutically credible ideas. The more I studied, the more I realized that this was something entirely different: a story of self-delusion, how we embrace baseless Biblical interpretations—posturing them as objective exegesis—because they help us make sense of our world and ease our consciences.  [ . . . ]  [read more]

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