Craig’s Blog

As a child, my mother told me stories about going to church with her grandmother. My great-grandmother belonged to a Pentecostal church that...

I’m not one for nostalgia. History is often distorted and glamorized when viewed through the rearview mirror. The more I share my past, the faster...

“Sometimes a dream lands so hard it flattens you.” (from “The Dream,” by Naomi Shihab Nye) Have you ever had a dream so emotional, so troubling, so...

I came to understand the legacy of Communism in 2023 when I was in Poland. While eating dinner at a restaurant with several new colleagues, I...

I struggled to write this week as the city of Chicago continues under a cloud of ICE raids. Heavily armed troops marched down the streets of...

Back in 8th grade, I jumped at the chance to spend my summer in a science program for young, aspiring scientists. My parents believed in encouraging...

  In 1997, the city of Robbins, Illinois, built an incinerator. Robbins is an African American south suburb about four miles from my home in...

One of the goals of the presbytery is to model different ways of doing worship and ministry. We believe creativity, imagination, and even...

This past weekend, AI took the next leap in its evolution with the introduction of ChatGPT5. AI shifted from the category of Narrow Intelligence...

A pastor gave me a stark description of ministry and how things were going at their church. They felt like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain,...

I made a photography mistake. Part of Marilyn’s and my July 4th tradition is to take pictures of fireworks. The key to good fireworks photos is a...

I am serving in my fourth year as your Executive Presbyter. There have been 41 pastoral transitions throughout the presbytery during that time. This...