Yes, I'm a minister. No, I don't have a church.

(Apologies to the non-Presbyterian readers... it's gonna get very real and very Presby here.) I'm the Online Conversation Curator for the NEXT Church Gathering  happening Monday through Wednesday in Chicago at Fourth Presbyterian Church . That means you will see me in sessions on my computer, and between sessions on my computer, and you'll see me online Tweeting, reTweeting, and having conversations with the Twitterverse. I'm a relative newcomer to NEXT Church, but they have been very welcoming to me. So I'll see you online! My Twitter handle: @lmcheifetz Event hashtag: #nextchurch2015 Here's a view from the walk over to the church! It's a lovely day here.

I’m “The Man.” Not a dude, no. But this kind of man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man I didn’t start out this way. I started out wanting to fight The Man. As early as high school, I wrote a mock piece of legislation providing state-sponsored free childcare for low-wage workers. I am pro-worker-justice, anti-colonial, pro-God’s-option-for-the-poor. I have student loans. I was a feminist before I could tell you the definition of the word. I used to walk the streets and distribute clean needles, bleach kits, and condoms. I used to demonstrate in my clergy collar for worker justice. My parents taught me about boycotts (Nestlé and grapes, in my day), marching in gay pride parades with one’s church, standing for peace and against the war with other religious leaders, and solidarity among minority groups. I thought endowments were ridiculous because they enable the dying and dwindling and mismanaged to last far beyond their useful years. But I’m now on the executive staff of ...

I texted my colleague, “If I go to chapel, how much will I regret it?” She responded, “LOL depends on who leads.” She is right. Unlike worshiping in a church, which typically has consistent worship leadership, worshiping at work (I work at the Presbyterian Center) with colleagues means going with the flow. Like the seminary I attended, worship leadership is shared. In the case of the Presbyterian Center, worship leadership is divided up among the four different church agencies in the building, and different ministry areas within the largest agency. I do not know who is leading each week. And the real kicker for someone like me (Uptight? Structured? Type A?) is that worship is set for 30 minutes, but the adherence to the time frame depends 100% on who is leading worship. A typical sermon plus communion usually equals more than 30 minutes. The delightful thing about worship here (and at the seminary I attended) is that worship can be meaningful no matter who leads it. It c...

I have been thinking a lot about children lately. (Not about having them. About the children who already exist.) Children coming across the U.S. border, fleeing violence. Children huddled inside shelters in Gaza, or playing on the beach, unprotected from the war raging around them. Children who become accustomed to running down to the bomb shelter when a siren goes off. Children who don’t have enough to eat during the summers when there is no school lunch program, or who go to school each day from a homeless shelter. Children who are unintended casualties of drone attacks in Pakistan. Children whose homes are more dangerous than their schools. We can blame it on their parents’ poor decisions, or their neighborhoods. We can blame it on their governments, whether those governments are Honduras or Guatemala, or involve Hamas. But too many people think of children as disposable. We would never call children disposable, not out loud. We love children, we say. People who block...

I have had A LOT OF FEELINGS lately, and have found it difficult to blog. I hope to slowly creep back into the blogging now that I've moved from Georgia to Kentucky. I co-led morning prayer this morning at the Presbyterian Center. I offered a very brief reflection before asking others gathered there for their reflections. Psalm 65 This psalm may have been used for thanksgiving celebrations during harvest times. We speak of God's mighty acts, of God's bounty, of God's unending goodness toward humanity. All this goodness is difficult to comprehend when there is so much suffering in the world. God is good and generous and powerful, but still dictators murder those who disagree with them, soldiers shoot at children, families go hungry and homeless in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, religious minorities are driven out of their homes, and money buys elections. Still, the sun shines, we find beauty around every corner. "The hills are dressed in pure ...

The following are remarks I made during the PC(USA) General Assembly Women's Leadership Institute/Young Women's Leadership Development event on June 13th.              My name is Laura. I’m 35 years old, but when I started engaging with the national church, I was 21. I attended McCormick Seminary, and was ordained in the Presbytery of Chicago as a Teaching Elder in 2006. I’m a double-p.k. Both my parents are ordained Presbyterian Teaching Elders. I am here because of an accident – a mix-up in mailing lists at the Presbyterian Center, which resulted in my parents receiving a mailing from the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, which they passed on to me, a lapsed Christian who was done with church. I went to an NNPCW Leadership Event in 1999, and now here I am, a church professional. After seminary, I worked with a Lilly Endowment-funded program at McCormick, then at the Forum for Theological Exploration (F...