Editor’s Note: You can listen to this Ash Wednesday Sermon on Restoration Anglican Church’s podcast. The life of Jesus is marked by healing. We marvel at the messiah as he travels through Galilee and Judea performing miracle after miracle, bringing wholeness and restoration to those who feel broken. Does the solemn reminder of mortality we…
Kolby Kerr serves as a bi-vocational minister at Restoration Anglican Church and high school English teacher in Richardson, Texas. He has contributed to Anglican Compass and several literary and educational publications. Kolby and his wife, Emily, have two sons, Beckett and Samuel, who generally keep him busy the rest of the time.
The Formational Power of Digital Habits: Practical Recommendations for Pastors
This post originally appeared at LeaderWorks. A while ago, I wrote about the ‘Formation Gap in the Information Age.’ I’m troubled by the incredible formational power our technologies exert on us and how slow local churches have been to account for this in their discipleship. If we are not speaking to the digital habits of…
Four Creative Constraints of the Preaching Life
This post originally appeared at LeaderWorks on January 23, 2018. Preaching may be more than art, but it is certainly not less. It is a craft and a skill. An individual may have certain gifts given by God, but those gifts are diminished if not stewarded by effort and practice. Excellence deceives us. When we…
Ten Novels Every Pastor Should Read
This post originally appeared at LeaderWorks on April 17, 2018. You are not a robot. When someone asks why they should bother to read novels, that’s my answer. And when I’m asked this question by someone in ministry, I bold and italicize it. Because behind this question is an ugly utilitarianism: What will these books…
Ten Poets Every Pastor Should Read
I made you a mixtape. Let me explain. When I get to know someone in church ministry and it comes out at some point that I have a background in poetry, there are usually just two responses. For some, it’s a polite pivot into safer conversational territory—so how about this weather we’ve been having, huh?…
Yanny vs. Laurel, Pentecost, and What People Hear
For the record, I hear Laurel. I can’t not hear Laurel. My wife hears Yanny. I’ll let you know how that works out. This latest viral sensation, similar to ‘The Dress’ before it, plays on the maddening subjectivity of human perception. Whether it’s sight or sound, we take our sensory perception as bedrock and when…
Special Event: Liturgy Taskforce Webinar
Easter isn’t a finish line—it’s our kickoff to a season of celebration. Still, pastors can be forgiven for admitting that after Holy Week, they are a little exhausted. Whether your church hosts vigils, daily services, or some other Easter extravaganza, there is a lot to juggle. Especially tricky is managing the liturgies. Palms and Passion,…
Pastoral Leadership and the Economy
The decline of the American church is often overblown. However, we have felt a seismic shift in cultural values in the 21st century. Even in the ‘Bible Belt’, it can’t simply be presumed that most people’s moral frameworks are founded on even a hazy understanding of the Bible. In looking for guidance in the behaviors…
The Gift of Lent
Lent begins with a necessary reminder: you are dust and to dust you shall return. In Ash Wednesday, we speak these difficult words so that we might resist the influential fictions that our daily lives impress upon us. The fiction that we are in control. That we can fix ourselves. That we were designed first and…
Generous Resolutions
Our church year begins with Advent, but self-reflection and goal-setting are good for all of us and the turning of the calendar is as good a time as any to start. This year, why not resolve to be more generous? As we argue in Giving Up, generosity is at the heart of the gospel. To…
Slow Down This Advent
Advent is a time of waiting. As one who didn’t grow up but had to grow into the church calendar, the movement from increasing anxiety as Christmas approached to cultivating patient anticipation refreshed my hectic heart. December is a hard time for church leaders to slow down. But the always-on, always-connected world we built with…
Interview: Arrabon
After the events in Charlottesville in August, I came across an article by Doug Paul of Missio Alliance with a catchy and convicting subtitle: “When a Generation of Church Planters Reach Only White People” In reviewing the book The Creative Class, Paul argues (persuasively) that in creating ‘hip’ church plants, many young pastors may be inadvertently…
