Matt Erickson

So glad to see my article on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and ministry see the light of day in Preaching Today. Here it is: “Metaphors for Ministry: Hitting ‘The Road’ with Cormac McCarthy”

Just finished reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch by George Eliot 📚

Just finished James Rebanks’ Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey, which struck me as beautiful, haunting, and filled with longing for a different way, not only for farming, but for so much else in life. 📚

The Fells reservation and reservoir in Medford and Winchester, MA.

Point Beach State Forest from three weeks ago.

What do we see or not see? What is above or below us? To what do we give our attention?

Just finished reading: T Bone Burnett by Lloyd Sachs. 📚

I love this beautifully haunting photo from a hike in the Maquoketa Caves State Park during last week’s vacation.

This pic from the Ice Age Trail near Monches, Wisconsin, at dusk continues to captivate me.

Enjoy “The Weekend Wanderer” for July 10 with Scot McKnight on the difference between platform and person, Dawn Araujo-Hawkins on green burials, Alan Jacobs on re-reading Acts, Christian Wiman on the poetry of faith and doubt, and so much more.

Schiltz Audubon Nature Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from a couple weeks ago.

The Middlesex Fells Reservation and reservoir in Medford and Winchester, MA.

Here is “The Weekend Wanderer” for 12 June 2021 with an Algerian pastor fined and his church ordered to close, NT Wright on the church & antiracism, L. M. Sacasas and Amy Crouch with two articles on technology, and two cinematic approaches to life after death.

Here is a prayer resource for self-reflection during these divided times. I developed this as part of a sermon I preached on unity this past weekend at @EastbrookChurch but wanted to share it more broadly.

This past Sunday at Eastbrook Church, we paused our weekend series so I could share about being a unified church in divided days. That message was drawn from Ephesians 4:1-6 and I posted part of it as a blog post today.

Here is “The Weekend Wanderer” for 5 June 2021 with Andy Crouch on the K-shaped recovery, the Louvre’s Coptic and Byzantine art, new dark matter mapping, and so much more.

It was so great to enjoy a beautiful afternoon yesterday with my family in Lincoln Park in Chicago. This is one of our favorite places outside of Milwaukee, the city we love most.

The pastor “will understand the people of God as a grouping of persons who God has called together…who will survive by God’s grace.” More in my sixth post on Eugene Peterson’s Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work: “The Pastoral Work of Community-Building: Esther.”

Here is The Weekend Wanderer for May 8 2021 - remembering Marva Dawn, provacative suggestions from Fleming Rutledge, Christians reflecting on the rise in refugee caps, and much more.

Emily Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” has always been a wonderfully alluring poem for me, and it is the latest poem in the “Poetry for Easter” series here.

“The pastor reads Ecclesiastes to get scrubbed clean from illusion and sentiment, from ideas that are idolatrous and feelings that cloy.” Taken from my fifth post on Eugene Peterson’s Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work: “The Pastoral Work of Nay-Saying: Ecclesiastes.”

I’m a bit of a book nerd, so every time I work through a preaching series I love to share the books I utilized in preparing messages. Here is the bibliography I used for a recent series on the Sermon on the Mount entitled “Becoming Real.”

I love stanza IV of “East Coker” from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, which is the latest installment of #PoetryforEaster 2021.

I just finished reading Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird 📚

I’m blogging through Eugene Peterson’s Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. Here is the fourth post: “The Pastoral Work of Pain-Sharing: Lamentations.” “Among other things pastoral work is a decision to deal, on the most personal and intimate terms, with suffering”