Tom Ehrich

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com.

All Stories by Tom Ehrich

COMMENTARY: Making a difference in a world that’s falling apart

By Tom Ehrich — November 26, 2013
(RNS) The outside focus group changed the air. By simply describing the realities with which they deal every day, they put Sunday morning fussing into perspective. A world broken at its very core demands better of its churches.

COMMENTARY: Sunday mornings are broken

By Tom Ehrich — November 19, 2013
(RNS) Church-as-Sunday-morning isn’t working; it probably never worked as much as we wanted. It certainly isn’t what Jesus envisioned. Christians were to share a common life and pray “unceasingly,” not gather occasionally for worship in a large, walled-off space.

COMMENTARY: ‘Gothic piles’ no longer necessary for finding faith

By Tom Ehrich — November 11, 2013
(RNS) Faith is about our assemblies, not the place of our assembling. It is about touches we share, words we exchange, sighs too deep for words, questions beyond answering, yearnings that draw us outside ourselves.

COMMENTARY: Drunk with power with nobody to stop them

By Tom Ehrich — November 5, 2013
(RNS) Self-centeredness is nothing new, of course. But for a time, ideals of community and shared sacrifice seemed to hold self-centeredness in check. Many of us think our nation is still playing by ethical rules that restrained an essential selfishness. Not so.

COMMENTARY: The buck never stops

By Tom Ehrich — October 29, 2013
(RNS) No one will accept accountability, for we live in age when the "buck" never stops on one's own desk, if it stops at all.

Democracy is a marketplace of (sometimes obnoxious) ideas

By Tom Ehrich — October 22, 2013
(RNS) Today's Tea Party partisans, as odious as I find their views, are just another minority trying to get their way in the competition of ideas.

COMMENTARY: Challenge and disruption

By Tom Ehrich — October 15, 2013
(RNS) Now we are seeking to transform -- transform constituents' lives and transform our troubled world. Now we are actually "doing what Jesus did." Now we are disrupting and challenging.

COMMENTARY: Old habits die hard

By Tom Ehrich — October 8, 2013
(RNS) Old ideas just need to be abandoned and something fresh and responsive allowed to emerge. Old ideas always benefit someone, and those someones tend to push back to protect their benefits. But that self-protective push-back isn’t a viable strategy.

COMMENTARY: Who elected these clowns?

By Tom Ehrich — September 30, 2013
SAN MATEO, Calif. (RNS) The politicians in Washington who are maneuvering for a federal shutdown should come to Central Park on El Camino Real where real people live, love and value each other instead of trying to tear down the government.

COMMENTARY: Stepping in when politicians step aside

By Tom Ehrich — September 24, 2013
POLAND, Ohio (RNS) Destructive elements in Congress might yet succeed in shutting down the government. But they won't cripple an emerging fervor among the faithful to bind up the nation's wounds.

COMMENTARY: The day the buzz died

By Tom Ehrich — September 17, 2013
NEW YORK (RNS) I walk past Best Buy on Fifth Avenue and feel no urge to go inside. Same with the Apple store. I'm just not wowed anymore, and it's the same lesson that churches are painfully learning.

COMMENTARY: Somebody else’s problem

By Tom Ehrich — September 10, 2013
(RNS) How do we deal with mounting resentment among downwardly mobile citizens? Funnel more wealth to the undeserving 1 percent, while subjecting the 99 percent to a maze of rules, police actions, dwindling benefits and a surveillance state.

COMMENTARY: The shameful politics of scorn

By Tom Ehrich — September 3, 2013
(RNS) We should be acknowledging the fundamental reality that we are "all in this together," that everything we do has impact on someone else. Instead, we deny the impacts of our behavior.

COMMENTARY: Change at the top

By Tom Ehrich — August 27, 2013
(RNS) Many congregations feel obliged to have long interim periods between pastors, during which all vestiges of the departed incumbent are erased, as if the transition were a traumatic divorce and remarriage, rather than a normal fact of institutional life.

COMMENTARY: Searching for a new imprint

By Tom Ehrich — August 20, 2013
(RNS) Our images of God, songs of worship and language of prayer tend to be those that were imprinted on us early on. It can take great patience and self-denial to hear another generation's soundtrack of faith and take it seriously.
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