By: Karen Rouggly on May 30, 2019
My grandpa is dying. Last night, we got home from visiting him while he is still doing well enough to interact with us. My family originates from Reading, Michigan and while I love living in California, there is something nostalgic about visiting the old homestead. Because we were there over Memorial Day, we went to…
By: Andrea Lathrop on May 30, 2019
If I had a dollar for every time I have had the conversation “what does our ministry staff even do all day?”…I would have at least $65. Ok, that is not as much as I thought when I first started that sentence, but you get the point. Very few of these conversations have been with congregants;…
By: Jean Ollis on May 30, 2019
Dr. Emma Percy – it’s challenging to track down information on you! I take pride in my sleuthing abilities, but Emma Percy gave me a run for my money. Alas I located her dissertation and was able to dig a bit deeper into her research in an attempt to understand her context of gender (mothering…
By: Mark Petersen on May 30, 2019
I’ve benefited from reading Emma Percy’s fresh book on clergy, even though I’m not ordained nor in pastoral ministry. Her work exposes how the way we view life is often diminished by an entrenched, gendered perspective; masculine models predominate in pastoral ministry. Flipping things around allows for the exploration of creative solutions of problems that…
By: Harry Edwards on May 30, 2019
Reading Emma Percy’s book What Clergy Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing turned out to be an enjoyable and fun experience. When I first scanned the pages, (a practice I do before I actually sit down to read any book) I thought “would the cultural and denominational distance between me and the author prevent…
By: Jenn Burnett on May 30, 2019
I’ve never really fit into a mould. I’ve never had any desire to. For a season I was a rugby playing, pastor mom. (I’ve since stepped back to rugby coaching.) Nobody in my life could really reconcile that combination of identities, but I found the tensions were liberating. My final season of varsity rugby, I…
By: Dan Kreiss on May 30, 2019
I had a friend who had been in ministry for several good years but whose advisor and counselor suggested he return to the home building trade where he would be able to recognize the results of his work. The thinking was that he was experiencing unnecessary stress due to the intangible nature of discipling others.…
By: Greg on May 30, 2019
Jonathon Swift said, “I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.”1 I became a full-time pastor at the age of 27. Young, bold, naive, and scared to death, were definitely adjectives…
By: Dave Watermulder on May 30, 2019
There is a very old (and not very funny) joke about pastors and their schedules. It goes something along the lines that a pastor only works “one day a week”. I have been told some version of this quip more times than I can count, often when running into church members or community members in…
By: Jennifer Williamson on May 30, 2019
Through my research, I’m coming to the conclusion that missionaries will thrive and bear fruit when they are intentional about working collaboratively with national partners. But this conclusion is based on faith, not sight. I can’t point to examples where this approach has proven effective, I can only stand by what I know to be…
By: Colleen Batchelder on May 29, 2019
How do you comfort someone who’s grasping onto the hand that she’s held for forty-seven years? How do you form words that ease the pain and bring some sense of peace? How do you fill the deafening silence with hope when one’s last breath makes the world stand still? The Rev Dr. Emma Percy, Chaplain…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on May 29, 2019
Much has been made in the Presbyterian Church (USA) about using gender inclusive terms to describe God. Since 1971, the General Assembly (the body of the church that makes nationwide policy decisions) has taken action “encouraging the use of inclusive language in worship, education, publications, and theological and biblical reflection.”[1] Being one of those “Gen…
By: Jay Forseth on May 29, 2019
While searching Google Scholar for book reviews on this week’s reading, I was immediately struck by an article that referenced What Clergy Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing by Emma Percy. In a journal called “Rural Theology” the authors stated four situations that might cause the greatest isolation for a local church pastor: [1] Bi-vocational;…
By: John Muhanji on May 28, 2019
When we were growing up in our villages in Kenya, we used to get a lot of stories and so many dos and don’ts. For example, when we were growing up to the age of ten years, we never knew how a child is gotten. We understood that a child was brought by an aircraft,…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on May 28, 2019
Knowing that we would be hearing from the author of this week’s book while in Oxford made me especially interested in Emma Percy’s book, What Clergy Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing. Once I dove in I appreciated it even more, mostly because she capitalized on the metaphor of mothering in reference to the…
By: Mike on May 28, 2019
Emma Percy’s What Clergy Do is a metaphorical glimpse at ministry, which examines the similarities between motherhood and priesthood. Percy’s “integrated life” principle is a key theme in the book that I plan on leveraging into my research on spiritual warfare.[1] I believe the “mothering” traits described by Percy will successfully blend into the armor…
By: Kyle Chalko on May 28, 2019
Ok folks. No satire here today. I really like this book. What Clergy Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing is an interesting and encouraging read for those in ministry. The thesis of the book was that an underacknowledged metaphor for pastoring a congregation is motherhood. And this analogy was helpful in many ways. In…
By: Jennifer Williamson on May 27, 2019
https://prezi.com/view/dR7FvblF7X2AyWJ71nzj/
By: Dan Kreiss on May 26, 2019
https://prezi.com/view/0nDQF34O0RS61LVmDNL5/
By: Mike on May 23, 2019
https://prezi.com/p/toojgcxbaiao/dmin-748-lgp8-prezi-presentation/ https://prezi.com/view/msM7NUgyCqWcoLWyImMC/
