by Jim Kelsey | Aug 7, 2015 | Opinion
My first-grade teacher was an innovator. She pushed the desks against the wall and placed carpets on the floor. We often sat in a circle and learned by stories, songs and interactive games. After that first year, it was 11 years of desk rows, lectures and copying...
by Jim Kelsey | Aug 20, 2014 | Opinion
I still remember clearly a brief conversation I had 20 years ago. At a weekly clergy group meeting, a woman, who had just returned from a trip to Russia where she discovered some Jewish lineage in her distant forbearers, effusively declared, “I’m a white,...
by Jim Kelsey | Dec 4, 2013 | Opinion
I got to the top of the stairs at the New York region office and realized my wedding band was gone. For nearly 23 years, it had been around my left ring finger. I had just finished washing my hands, so I returned to the sink and took the pipe underneath apart; the...
by Jim Kelsey | Sep 11, 2013 | Opinion
Pachebel’s “Canon” is one of my favorite pieces of music. My wife, Debbie, and I used it as the prelude at our wedding, which, for me, gives it additional affective power. Early in my days at a church I pastored in Ohio, I shared this with my church...
