The Mainline Minister

Over the past year I've made quite a few visits to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to see parishioners. Yesterday, I returned to DHMC -- but this time, as a patient. It was interesting to see how this side of the hospital worked. Fortunately, I only have good things to report: everybody was helpful and professional. For those not in the know, I found myself with an awful pain in my ear and a temp north of 105 degrees yesterday morning. That last bit of information resulted in an instruction by the physician on duty to head over to the Emergency Department, which we did. The docs declared that I had an ear infection, and that it was in impressive one, too. Now, I don't know about you, but my experience with ear infections has usually involved very small children. And, indeed, it is very small children who most commonly suffer from said malady. However, I learned two things yesterday: adults can get ear infections and you should never, ever doubt anything a child wi

The latest issue of the Christian Century includes an ad encouraging readers to make their Amazon purchases through the magazine's "Buy from Amazon" link. This isn't a novel approach to raising money; many organizations participate in the on-line retailer's referral program. So why comment? Well, the ad poses the following question: "What are CC readers buying?" The answer: a particular book; tie-dyed slippers; turtle-shaped chocolate molds (I kid you not); and ... sleeping pills. Sleeping pills. That got my attention. Now, I'm sure this item's inclusion was random. But maybe it wasn't, at least on some level. You see, the majority of the Century 's readers are clergy. And the ministry can be a stressful line of work. So I found myself wondering: what's keeping my clerical colleagues awake at night? Sermon prep? Worship planning? Imbalanced budgets? One of any number of institutional crises in the wider church? Too much