Senior Writer’s Block

One of the most important spiritual truths I’ve discovered over the course of a life of ministry is that a prayer for “patience” is the one prayer God almost always answers, usually in the form of offering me an immediate opportunity to exercise it. Patience, it turns out, isn’t something that God simply grants to…

If you’re like me and grew up in the church, you probably had some really great Sunday school teachers who helped you on the path toward ministry — people who, week after week, gave up their time and sanity to lock themselves in a room with some socially inept yet theologically inquisitive young minds. My…

“SlamBall Jesus” seemed like such an awesome sermon. A new extreme sport had been introduced in the U.S., one in which basketball was played with trampolines on the court and wild leaping, hitting and slam-dunking. I connected the SlamBall game to Jesus clearing the moneychangers out of the temple and said that he was angry,…

I was recently cruising the buffet at a neighborhood gathering with a lot of “unchurched” (or de-churched, or non-churched, or whatever we’re calling “them” these days) and got into one of those typical conversations that we clergy types tend to stumble into. After some winsome discussion of our golf games and how the baseball season…

Meals at the Kaylor household are often an eclectic mix of cuisines, with my wife Jennifer being a vegan and our daughter Hannah and I being regular omnivores (me slightly trending toward carnivore). It’s actually been good for all of us to eat a more plant-based diet, and it’s led me to try some things…

One of my healthier rituals is to spend several hours a week at our local fitness center working off the stress of the day and the pounds gained from sipping vanilla lattes — one of my other less healthy rituals. The way I figure it, the two rituals ultimately cancel each other out, so it…

“So, teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Psalm 90:12, NRSV). The turn of the calendar to a new year brings to mind the perception that time seems to be moving ever faster these days. Perhaps that’s the product of middle age — being on the downhill portion of…

Planning for Advent is one of the most difficult tasks for the preacher, particularly for those of us who have preached a lot of Advents over the years. It’s that time of year when your local big box store has been stocking Christmas items since late September, when Christmas carols play 24-7 on certain radio…

One of the ironies of being the Senior Writer for Homiletics is that I’m a “series” preacher writing for a lectionary-based magazine. While I’ve used the lectionary at times over the years and certainly value the cycle of texts and seasons, I tend to gravitate toward sermon series and, in particular, sermon series that do…

The 96-mile trek of the West Highland Way ends at a pedestrian shopping plaza in the city of Fort William in northern Scotland. After six days of walking 15-20 miles per day up and down Munros, traversing moorlands, viewing mystical and jaw-dropping scenery and reading place names that seemed straight out of a Tolkien novel,…