by Amy Butler | Apr 11, 2024 | Feature-, Opinion
A friend recently recounted the following fable. A baby was walking on a path toward what was, for him, a new and completely unfamiliar experience–birth. (Don’t ask me how the baby was walking. That’s not the point). Traveling the opposite direction on the same path...
by Amy Butler | Feb 20, 2024 | Feature, Opinion
For most of my career, I have wittingly or unwittingly been recruited as a poster child for issues the church has trouble confronting. In 2003, I began one of several pastorates as the first female church leader. In my little moderate Baptist world, I was one of just...
by Amy Butler | Jan 30, 2024 | Feature, Opinion
I am still a pastor because it is my deep calling. Unlike most sane people, I love the church and have my entire life. My love for the church is strange because of the obstacles I have had to climb to do what I love. And what I love is to lead communities that are...
by Amy Butler | Jul 25, 2023 | Feature, Opinion
We parked on the curb and our eyes automatically pulled to our left. You couldn’t miss the chain linked fencing surrounding the soaring but now-charred tower of St. Liborious, a prominent German Catholic cathedral that had been a center of the community for families...
by Amy Butler | Jul 12, 2023 | Feature-, Opinion
Lectionary preachers were assigned Genesis 22 recently, the story of Abraham’s almost-murder of his son Isaac, as a text for worship.  If you recall, the story goes that Abraham heard a voice the text calls God’s voice, telling him to take his son Isaac on a hike, to...
