UPDATE November 21, 2021: I share my sermons and a few other things on here to proclaim the Gospel and perhaps be of help to people. If anyone finds an idea or even a whole sermon that they would like to use, please use it and share it. I’m not going to go to the trouble of formally adopting a Creative Commons license for this, but please be ethical in your use: acknowledge your sources for long quotes/adaptations and don’t re-publish my stuff commercially without permission. But mostly, share the good news directly, simply and faithfully and if my words are a help, use them.
For 25 years I was a theological librarian, first at the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary in New York, then for two and a half years as library director at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. and then, from 2003 to May of 2015 at the General Theological Seminary in New York City as the Director of the Christoph Keller, Jr. Library. (or its Facebook Page). I was a member of the faculty of that institution until circumstances caused most of us to leave. You can follow the links on this page or read about it here.
I’m an Episcopal Priest and from November 2014 to July 2016 I served on Sundays at Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania in the Bronx. It is a wonderful community of great faith and courage and it was a joy to serve there. Since then, I have been serving congregations as an intentional interim. I work with them to find their health and vitality so that their discernment of their new direction grows out of that healthy faith and not out of anxiety about what has happened in the past or fear of the future. I owe a lot in to Rob Voyle whose Appreciative Inquiry approach has helped give language to my best pastoral instincts and to integrate those with solid and fearless theology. I completed certification in Appreciative Transitional Ministry in July 2017.
After about three years of interim ministries in Northern California and New Jersey, I returned to Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania at the beginning of 2019.
This blog mostly has sermons that I’ve preached, as well as some posts that I have found important to share, sometimes written by others.
I am married to Paula Schaap and we live in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, where I spend as much time as possible gazing at the beautiful Hudson River and the Palisades on the other side.
Me with my beautiful wife, Paula
Observations 
Drew, I so enjoyed “hearing” your voice. I was not certain how to approach the topic of racism in my preaching. Your gentle approach challenges without provocating a cutoff of listening. I, tried to voice the concern for the contunued oppression of blacks by police and other systemic racism and at the same time express the difficult choices and fears police face in their work. No one gave me a hard time aftetward but I see that as perhaps a failure to afflict the comfortable. Sigh…
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Thanks Christine. Of course, the congregation I’m preaching to is all black, and is one that has suffered much loss and hard times in recent months. Thus it is of foremost importance to be respectful and to be comforting and to offer hope in a time when panic is a real temptation.
One thing that I notice is how differently the policing in the Ferguson and Staten Island cases worked than I learned about while sitting in on the police academy in Lincoln Nebraska. There, good policing meant officers working together and striving to keep situations from escalating to the point of violence. Somehow this sort of policing we have now appears to encourage escalation and to seek ways to intimidate the community. Is it 30 years ago vs. today? Or is it predominantly white vs. black? There is good policing that happens, but the attitudes that generate these situations and decisions end up negating much of it.
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