Dave Buerstetta on striving to do justice and love others while walking humbly with God
Merry Christmas! The closest thing I have to a consistent tradition on this blog is this Christmas day offering.Each Christmas I post the Isaiah passage below (which is a reading for Christmas Eve worship every year); John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," which I find the world's best and most challenging Christmas song; and …
Here's what I wrote our congregation, Woodridge UMC, this week: In this fourth week of Advent, we continue to wait for the birth of the Christ Child. In lieu of some inevitably over-long treatise, allow me to offer a few brief instances of inspiration I’ve recently encountered. Wanting words of wisdom to redirect our thinking?“Darkness and …
Growing up in the '70s and '80s in a family that was actively involved in a Baptist* congregation meant going to church on Wednesdays as well as Sundays. *Important distinction: ours was (well, still is) an American Baptist church, not part of the Southern Baptist Convention. We may have been White evangelicals (though we never …
This past Sunday, our son and I simultaneously arrived at our driveway from opposite directions. I, returning from church. He, from baseball practice. Our conversation went something like this:Him: How was church?Me: Good! The band played for the first time in a while and sounded great! We had a good crowd, including some folks we …
Routines often help us stay organized and optimized, saving energy and brain power for more important decisions. (I talked about this in a sermon recently--I'll have to get that posted here soon!) But routines can also become ruts and sap energy. For years now, my partner in ministry at Woodridge UMC, Lead Pastor Rev. Danita …
Previously on All I Can’t Leave Unsaid… “Take care of your blog,” Robin Rendle wrote. “Blogging changed my life,” my friend Hugh Hollowell, Jr. wrote in a recent newsletter. Inspired by them I’ve returned to this space… one two three and a half weeks later I’m still trying to get this post up. Ugh. Such is life here at All …
How can a small local congregation respond to a war on the other side of the globe? I don't know for sure, but that is, in part, what I tried to explore in this sermon. The good people of Woodridge United Methodist Church have previously taken bold action in opposition to the USA invasion war …
Merry Christmas! The closest thing I have to a tradition on this blog is this Christmas day offering. Each Christmas I post the Isaiah passage below (which is a reading for Christmas Eve worship every year); John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," which I find the world's best and most challenging Christmas song; and …
Buck O'Neil is kinda, sorta, my grandfather. That is a very bizarre idea for me to posit. Here's what I mean: over the last 15-20 years I've learned to love reading what Joe Posnanski writes and, more recently, listening to what Joe Posnanski says. Before that Substack, Joe wrote for several newspapers, Sports Illustrated, The …
Merry Christmas! The closest thing I have to a tradition on this blog is this Christmas day offering. Each Christmas I post the Isaiah passage below (which is a reading for Christmas Eve worship every year); John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," which I find the world's best and most challenging Christmas song; and …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 