By Eddie Pipkin I love ritual and tradition (which kind of makes sense for this line of work, doesn’t it?) So, every year, I eat the same thing on New Year’s Day. Like the southern boy my momma raised me to be, I have to ring in the first page on the calendar with a [...]
By Eddie Pipkin You might have picked up on my great affection for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It is one of my favorite stories of any season, not just Christmas. It’s perfect in structure, effective in imaginatively exploring big themes and influential as a literary and cultural phenomenon. I’ve read it dozens of times and [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Christmas is here, a full and frantic season for all you merry elves of ministry. So, let us just take a moment to wish you a blessed and happy time with family and friends (as well as the extended, adopted circles of family and friends you choose to care for because this [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Since I’m always keenly attuned, whenever I attend any public event, to the dynamics of venues, programming, and hospitality, the past 10 days has been a gift that kept giving. I was blessed to attend three distinctly different experiences, and each reinforced the other with lessons in how we can offer what [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Last weekend I ran a half marathon. It was the second one I had done, and it felt like I was woefully unprepared. My training schedule had been disrupted by some unplanned travel, I was battling various minor injuries, and to top it off, I got sick the weekend before the race. [...]
By Eddie Pipkin There was a lot of great football on last weekend, and if you watched any of it while you were digesting all that turkey, at some point you noted a spontaneous, ubiquitous phenomenon familiar to modern sports fans the world over. It’s called The Wave, and if you’ve ever been to a [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Here we are, arrived at the cusp of the Day of Giving Thanks. And you’ll be expressing gratitude in all manner of ways for all manner of benefactions. Gratitude, as I like to say, is the cornerstone of a well-lived life. But while you’re out there guiding others in gratitude exercises, articulating [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I was stranded trying to get home this week when my Jeep gave up the ghost in Georgia, where I’d been helping family for a few days. I was already a day behind schedule, delayed due to wrapping up some promised projects, and I was anxious to get back to Orlando and [...]
by Eddie Pipkin Every organization needs a LaMelo. If you don’t know what a LaMelo is, read on, dear friend. But believe me when I say that your life will be richer, your organization freshly empowered, the creative possibilities expanded, and the energy levels amped to 11 if you get some metaphorical LaMelo in your [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Last week, I experienced two different insights into how the church might (or might not) respond to cultural shifts by functioning as an extended family for people who need new ways to connect to others and need support for getting through life’s day-to-day challenges. One of these moments was reading a long-form [...]
