Kids don’t have the same notions about what the Bible is or how it works that adults have. If adults welcome kids’ thoughts and insights, if we want to hear their questions and reactions, we will find ourselves having totally different (and better) conversations about the Bible.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.

So when Jesus — a Jewish rabbi — sits alone with a Samaritan woman, speaks kindly to her, engages her theologically, and reveals himself more clearly to her than to almost anyone else… this scene is already scandalous in all the right ways.

It’s a story about crossing boundaries, not shaming sinners.

Becoming alert to our dominant thinking—a barrier to listening to God—is generating a way into new freedoms. Contemplative praying encourages a gracious and compassionate approach to uncovering—gently and patiently removing the obstacles to God’s way for our inner life and for our public life.

The Parable of the Talents has, at least functionally, come to be interpreted through the lens of congregational finance and wealth stewardship. In many places, it is emphasized as a consoling text that softens and contextualizes other, more challenging things Jesus said about wealth.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.

God of steadfast love, be with us in our gathering, our grief, and our fear. Soften our hearts to receive your love, and strengthen our bodies to act with justice. Out of the depths we cry to you; fill us with the peace that passes all human understanding. Amen.

In the face of ongoing anti-immigration acts in Minnesota and throughout our nation, we offer notes on the lectionary texts along with a call to worship, prayer of the day, prayer petitions, and dismissal all grounded in the day’s Gospel text and in God’s everlasting cry for justice.

It’s a good time to remember what has already been accomplished by God, to declare publicly what is universally and uniquely and unconditionally true, and to practice carrying promises as a community instead of fending only for ourselves.

Everything is different now. I returned home to find this occupation is cruel and pervasive and completely disorienting. And. I returned home to find the resolve of our community familiar and fierce. Steady like salt. Huddled for warmth. Lighting the way. 

 I want to pause here and speak directly to those who lean conservative, consider themselves evangelical, or Republican. I do so as someone who has, at different points in my life, considered myself conservative, evangelical, and Republican — and who still understands why those commitments feel meaningful, especially in uncertain times.

… If you feel caught between what your faith is asking of you and what your community expects from you, you are not alone.

This post is not a call to abandon conservatism or to embrace a different tribe. It is a call to something older and deeper: the freedom to remain loyal to Jesus even when that loyalty complicates our political identity.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.

Resources for Right Now is a living resource crafted amid the January 2026 escalation of violent immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this collection, we hope to equip the church’s leaders with diverse ways to speak into this moment, in sermon prompts, short illustrative stories, songs new and old, and liturgy and prayers. 

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.

 If faith is trust, if religion is really about what you trust enough to organize your entire life around, then what are those of us who call ourselves “nones” supposed to do with that? […] in this particular moment of instability and violence and fear and anxiety, I keep wondering: what lessons are religious leaders offering that might matter to those of us outside their communities? […] But how can they function as conversation partners—helping us ask better questions even if they can’t give us answers?

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

The line between theatrical production and reverent worship is as thin as the veil between heaven and earth, a veil that was torn when Christ died, or perhaps long before. After all, Jesus was a storyteller who followed the models of the prophetic storytellers, who were inspired and guided by the source of all stories, our heavenly Creator.

Revelation cuts both ways. It comforts the vulnerable and indicts the powerful. It saves some and judges others—not because God changes, but because people respond differently when the truth is made visible. You cannot unleash chaos on communities, terrorize people in broad daylight, and then claim innocence when fear and resistance follow. You do not get to be both the author of violence and its victim.

Each week we at Church Anew provide you with Lectionary Musings, a collection of previous posts related to the lectionary texts for the coming Sundays and feast days. This post is not that. This post is for my fellow ministers and church leaders staring down Sunday and wondering: How do I lead in a time like this?

If this makes you uncomfortable, good. Let that discomfort move you toward action, toward solidarity, toward truth. This is not a moment to look away.