Dear Edinburg First Family, In late September, I gathered with a group of pastors in Kerrville, TX, for my first Residency in Ministry retreat as part of my journey toward ordination. For two days, I sat around a table with the eight other pastors working toward ordination, our two retreat facilitators, and the nine ordained mentors who will walk alongside us for the next two years. It was a room filled with folks with graduate and doctoral degrees in the Bible, theology, and ministry...

Robert Frost’s lines have a way of showing up at graduations and inspirational posters, usually read as a simple call to be bold, to choose the unconventional path. But read the whole poem, and it’s stranger and more honest than that. The speaker admits both roads were worn “really about the same.” He doesn't know, and won’t know for years, whether his choice was the right one. He only knows it was his choice, and that choosing shaped everything after. I don’t think discipleship is about two...

ear Edinburg First Family, I’ve had The Porter’s Gate song “Come, All Who Are Weary” on repeat this week. It takes Jesus’s own words in Matthew 11:28-30 and turns them into an invitation you can sing: to the weary, to the striving, to anyone whose shoulders are tired—come, lean in, lay it down. The melody itself feels like exhaling. It’s the kind of song that slows your breathing down just by listening to it. That invitation comes straight from Scripture: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from...