2021 -- A Personal Year in Review

December 30, 2021

2021 -- A Personal Year in Review

The year 2021 was a year that lived under the shadow of COVID. We started with COVID and we'll end with COVID. We saw a new President inaugurated and an attack on the Capitol that was designed to interfere with the process of electing Joe Biden as President. These events continue to overshadow us. But that's not what this reflection is about. This is about my 2021.

2021 is the year I retired from full-time pastoral ministry. I was fortunate that the COVID numbers were way down in mid-June. This was right before the Delta surge began, so we could gather for a party. I'm grateful that I could leave Central Woodward Christian Church on such a high note. Now, I may have retired from full-time ministry, but in October I began what will be a seven-month stint as supply pastor/preacher at First Presbyterian Church. While I was ready to let go of the administrative responsibilities of ministry, I discovered I wasn't quite ready to completely vacate the pulpit. I still have four more months to preach.

Even as I have continued to preach these past several months since I crossed the river (that was our 2019 sabbatical theme that was designed to prepare both me and the church for my eventual retirement). I've also continued writing and publishing. Right now I am working on a book on eschatology in partnership with Dr. Ron Allen, Professor Emeritus at Christian Theological Seminary. This book should see the light of day in 2023 and will be published by Westminster John Knox Press.

While I have a book project underway, 2021 saw the publication of two new books. Well, one is a revision of an earlier book. The other is brand new. I'm very proud of both books, which I hope many of you will choose to read and share with friends and neighbors.

First is the revision. In 2013 I published with Energion Publications the book Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening. That book was a labor of love, that I had been working on for many years. It is a book about spiritual gifts pitched to a more progressive/mainline audience. While the book was a worthy read, I had come to believe that it could be improved upon. Besides working through the text to make sure any typos and other errors had been rectified, I had the opportunity to build into it more of my interfaith experiences. So, in 2021, thanks to my publisher, a new edition has emerged. So, check out Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening, Revised and Enlarged Edition, (Energion Publications 2021).

The next book came out in September 2021 from Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock). It's titled Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots, (Cascade Books). Grace Ji-Sun Kim kindly wrote the Foreword to the book, for which I'm grateful. This is a very personal book in that I share elements of my own spiritual journey that took me from the Episcopal Church of my birth to the Disciples of Christ, the church of my adulthood, and ordained ministry. I use the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 as the biblical thread that ties the book together. I believe it can be of great help to many who are navigating spiritual journeys that have taken them many places, and they may wonder what to do with these experiences? Well, I talk here about integrating those experiences. The same is true for congregations who are increasingly composed of people from a wide variety of traditions. So, again, check out Called to Bless. I think you will be blessed by reading it.