By Eddie Pipkin Who knew that a filmmaker’s lessons from working with eight Australian magpies could be so useful for insights into leading ministry? When I was reading about director Glendyn Ivin’s work on the film Penguin Bloom and how dependent it was on wrangling and training these highly intelligent (but definitely wild) bird actors, [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I was out in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, and it was cold (duh!). It was perfect weather for sitting by the fire pit, and for the better part of the day, that’s exactly what I and a couple of pals did. What is it about those mesmerizing flames, talking with [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I love inspirational sports stories and the lessons they offer us for leadership and perseverance. And if sports metaphors aren’t your thing, you can start rolling your eyes now, but it is hard to ignore the abundant examples of team spirit, shared focus, overcoming expectations, second chances, and straight-up hard work that [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I warned you in my Christmas parody poem that it would be Easter in no time at all, and here we are less than two weeks away from Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Many of us practice the spiritual discipline of giving up something for the Lenten season, and while [...]
By Eddie Pipkin This is the last in our January series, and the fourth in a series of blogs on how to avoid self-sabotage in our ministries. This week I wanted to revisit a topic that we have covered numerous times from many different angles. It’s one of those topics that is so basic, so [...]
By Eddie Pipkin This is the third week in our series about not sabotaging ourselves as we strive for excellence in ministry in 2021. Every January, for my wife and I, as documents arrive in our mailbox acknowledging our contributions to charities for the previous year, we are touched by some of the handwritten notes [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Part 2 of our January series on avoiding ministry self-sabotage presents a true story in which a leader whiffed when given an opportunity to engage an interested volunteer. All of the topics in this series are based on true stories from my adventures in ministry or attempted adventures, because sometimes so stupefyingly [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Resolution season is in full swing. I know this because the neighbor lady has renewed her back-patio sunrise workout routine, accompanied by an enthusiastically amplified, dance party playlist. God bless her in her efforts (which generally last a couple of window-shaking weeks, give or take). I wrote about leadership resolutions last week, [...]
By Eddie Pipkin It’s resolution time, like it or not! (Some of you love it, and some of you hate it, and for Methodists it’s a tradition anchored in John Wesley’s glorious Covenant Renewal Service all the way back in 1740 and a no-brainer for a denomination which values the principle of “moving on to [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Last Christmas season, way back in December of 2019 when life was whimsical and visions of ministry sugar plums danced in our unsuspecting heads, I wrote a paraphrase of Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), modified as a celebration of your hard [...]
