New Year, New Focus for the Blog

I started this blog a couple of years ago, mainly as a place to post my sermons. While in my parish internship, I began posting my monthly newsletter column here. And then at some point, I started actually blogging, writing for this invisible internet audience. This blog has never been especially active, though I am pleased that several of my blog posts have earned some attention and prompted some interesting conversations, in the comments sections, in congregational life, and in the broader Unitarian Universalist community.

“Building the beloved community” is the heart of my ministry. Powerful cultural forces push us into isolation and disconnection, and it is our hard spiritual work to find a sense of belonging, to build relationship, to share our honest and authentic selves, to stay in relationship during conflict, to recognize our interconnectedness, to take stands for justice…all these things. This is the work of my parish ministry and, I believe, of congregational life.

As this is now my more than full-time work, I find I rarely have time, energy, or interest in blogging about it. That energy goes primarily to my sermons now.

BUT. I do have energy and interest in blogging about something else.

My congregation will be undertaking a substantial expansion and renovation construction project in the next few years. With my own background in construction, I have long been interested and inspired by the work of building and expanding the physical space of our Unitarian Universalist congregations.

So let’s take “building the beloved community” a little more literally, shall we?

My hope is for the blog to become a central place for sharing and talking about our building projects. I would love to eventually become a site where congregations turn in photos and project descriptions for sharing. We’ll see what happens!