The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Carol Howard Merritt is a writer, conference speaker, and the cohost of God Complex Radio.
A minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she formerly served as a pastor of Western Presbyterian Church, an intergenerational congregation in Washington, D.C.
Carol's the author of Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation (The Alban Institute, August 2010) and Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, (The Alban Institute, September 2007).
Carol is also the co-host of the Internet Radio Show,The God Complex, with Bruce Reyes-Chow. And she blogs for the Huffington Post.
Photo by Heather Wilson
Latest Content by The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(
PCUSA)
From my commencement address to the 2013 graduates of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia
You will do big things. That's not just some sort of pie-in-the-sky commencement lingo. You will be changing Christianity in our country. You know why? Because we've been serving up a lot of Costco lasagna in our churches.
Read full article...
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(
PCUSA)
This is the fourth year of UNCO that I've hosted. During that time, we've gone from a small handful of people who really wanted to meet one another after interacting on Twitter to meeting on two coasts, conconting dreams and implementing creative projects. If you're a pastor, lay leader, seminary student, writer, academic or anyone interested in working toward the future of the church with action that moves beyond hand-wringing and an institutional nostalgia, then by all means, go to UNCO. You'll find kindred souls there.
Read full article...
Other Recent Content by The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
April 26, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
This week, we feel the weight and yearnings of those far beyond our pews. We hold the pain of the country, as we pray for the bombing victims in Boston and those who suffer through the explosion in West, Texas. Someone addressed poison-laced letters to our politicians. We fought for sensible gun laws and felt desperate that our congress could not pass the legislation that a majority of Americans support, even after the mass shooting of children.
April 22, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
On Thursday, April 18, I will be in the Chicago area for Impact 365. If you're in the area, you're welcome to attend! Here is an interview, conducted by Bronwen Henry, one of the event's coordinators and the Managing Editor at New Church Connection.
April 12, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Since Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, has been urging us to lean in, conversations have been buzzing about what it means to be a feminist. I’m always thankful for the opportunity to revisit the question.
April 05, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
How do extensions, avatars, anonymity, masks and criticism affect the way we see ouselves in community?
March 30, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
How retraditioning, innovation, teams and mututality can help us as we face what's to come in the future of the church.
March 24, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
What do you think the church will look like in 20 years? People constantly ask me this question—in person, on Twitter, on Facebook. I love looking at generational trends, philosophical understandings and technological developments, while praying and imagining where God might lead us.
March 04, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
One afternoon when I was completely stressed out about some criticism I received from my congregation, another minister took me to lunch. She asked me about the history of the congregation and helped me sort out some of their past traumas.
February 07, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
When I walk into a space, I automatically imagine how it can be more aesthetically pleasing. As a pastor, my brain often kicked into action: Asbestos tiles and white carpet? We might as well put a sign up that says, "No children allowed." We could surely replace these yellow fiberglass windows with stained glass. We need to paint this wall.
February 03, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Public Religion Research just came out with a report that says that 64% of evangelicals who say “pro-life” describes them very well oppose stricter gun laws. How can this be?
January 10, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
What are progressive Christians doing in order to help women thrive in our society? And can we learn anything from the Religious Right?
January 07, 2013
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I'm proud to be a part of a movement whose great concern is learning to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And as we move into the New Year, I hope those voices of justice will grow stronger and I wish for some other things as well.
December 15, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
We called it the spring semester, but it felt like the dead of winter to me. The never-ending Chicago cold months slapped me in the face. I juggled my new schedule along my books, when I walked into the classroom filled with women. I was a student at Moody Bible Institute.
December 03, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I wrote that Progressive Christians are entering the age of relevancy, but I hope that we can quickly end our back-patting congratulations and get to work. I also pray that we will not respond to our relevancy by becoming ensnared by the trappings of power. On many accounts, it would be good to learn from the Religious Right and their demise. What happened? Why did they fall into irrelevancy? Can we avoid the same problems? How?
November 26, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
It's been a sobering few decades for Christians who work alongside the poor, claim their feminism, respect scientific discovery, care for the earth, and yearn for marriage equality. We felt like the voice of Christianity had been captured by some strange ventriloquist, and it was proclaiming things that often contradicted our faith. We became frustrated with our own irrelevance, as our speech in the public square seemed to be on permanent mute.
October 27, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
The scripture text is full of emotional content and if we do not pay attention to it, then we’re missing another layer of what God might be saying to us.
October 22, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
How do we respond to our anxious culture during this election cycle?
October 08, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I feel much more spiritual when I don’t admit that I’m jealous. It's not an attractive emotion and I’m sure that my shadow side will disappear if I never shine any light on my pettiness. But, somehow it doesn’t work that way.
September 22, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
As Christians who strive for social justice, we know that we need the fast and furious exposure that social media can bring. But we also need the long-term, careful work that takes decades.
September 14, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Recently, I was reading another article that said that the church should be like Apple computers and pastors ought to be like Steve Jobs. But that does not reflect the calling of the church.
September 07, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
f you’re starting out in the ministry, here are some things that you can do when inappropriate comments are directed your way. These tools should be used for use with verbal, awkward, unwanted situations. If there is a physical touch, a verbal violation, or if you are in danger, the tools should be entirely different.
August 16, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Montreat's Institute for Church Leadership is holding a Leading with Bold Imagination Conference. I'm the conference preacher, so they asked me a few questions.
August 13, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Most people who serve as church leaders realize what an important time it is in our religious landscape. Because of demographic, generational, technological, and economic shifts, we realize that many churches are coming to the end of their seasons. In this important moment, we will need leaders who can experiment, create, test, and plant. Montreat Conference Center interviewed me on this.
July 20, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
For the last couple of years, I have been a bivocational minister by choice. In other words, I have had a strong, deep sense of call to the pastorate, a place where I have served and loved people for fourteen years, while also nurturing this growing drive to write. I understand the excitement and frustrations of trying to balance. As I thrive in two pursuits, I feel like I’m cheating life.
July 14, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
For ten years, I expected my father to die. For those long years, when I picked up a call from my mom, I anticipated devastating news. Dad had those mini-strokes that snuck up on him and addled his brain, and so I balanced for a decade on edge.
July 07, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
In our corner of the economy, excellent pastors got fired and many took wage and benefit cuts. In some cases, the congregations didn’t realize that their decrease in membership was a national trend that had a lot to do with shifting demographics.
June 19, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Authentic. For the last ten years, "authentic" seems to be a key word for ministers. I’m not sure when the shift happened, but when we work in multi-generational settings, the changing expectations can be palpable.
May 14, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
As church leaders, how do we manage our time? Our day is already full, and now we need to do social media on top of it all?
March 25, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
"I saw him in the parking lot with her. I think he wanted to get caught," my mom's hushed voice bleeds with betrayal. Unlike most gossip, this conversation doesn't have the quality of a listener, hungry for salacious trivialities. The whole house feels on edge, as I sit on the couch in an adjoining room, straining to hear.
March 03, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I’m chairing a committee that just finished its initial report for the national assembly of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). We were charged with making plans for our common future. Of course, these finding are from our denomination, but I think they’re instructive for most mainline traditions.
February 02, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Not many people in our denominations would admit to being a racist. And yet, we hear stories of systemic discrimination on a constant basis. What are we going to do about it?
January 27, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I learned in seminary that a church is a place where we proclaim the word and administer the sacraments. I’m now learning there’s another criterion: financial sustainability.
January 19, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
In the beginning of our careers, it becomes particularly important to ask, what did God have in mind when God was knitting us together? What is our vocation?
January 03, 2012
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
How do we do to signal to a new generation that they're not welcome in our churches? Usually congregations don’t mean to create these obstacles, but that doesn't keep younger generations from seeing them. What are the signals?
December 23, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
One thing that has been difficult to realize (and equally difficult to communicate to the larger church) is the young clergy crisis.
December 05, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
In some ways, I think of our churches like a crop of corn that was planted at the same time. That field produced corn for 50 years—so much wonderful corn that many of us were fat and happy. In our abundance, we forgot to diversify and plant new fields.
November 22, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
A Scrapper is pragmatic. We are people who have learned to work outside of institutional structures in order to get stuff done.
November 15, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
When first settled down to read Barth, I had to make sure that I had Kleenex close at hand. We read about God the Creator first. The words clinched me, each time I read, “God is for us.”
November 06, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Recently, I discovered a new place in my internal landscape. It came after several rejections. When I was frustrated with a bundle of no’s, I went to see my spiritual director, and she pointed me to something else.
October 27, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
For three months, I’m immersing myself in the art of letters. It was as if my words needed to breathe and I’m relearning the beauty of the page.
October 24, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
It occurred to me as I was talking about the situation in which many young adults find themselves, that we might need a new definition of selfhood. Right now, it seems that we define ourselves by our independence and our careers.
September 20, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
We’ve set the landscape: we looked at work, family structures, finances and ethnic make-up. Now, we need to ask, what sort of church would work in a new generation? What is our vision for the 21st Century?
September 15, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Putting energy into helping one homeless person does not keep you from defending the poor in the political sphere. Loving my daughter does not keep me from fighting for women’s rights.... One action informs the other, and we need to keep doing both.
August 16, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Our country is seeing an incredible shift in ethnic makeup, as a new majority emerges. If we can embrace those changes, we can be ready for a vital church for generations to come.
July 27, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I still have the song in my head. The haunted voice of Amy Winehouse echoes through my work, as I answer emails and file papers: "You know I'm no good."
July 25, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
While answering “What is your vision for the church in the 21st century?” I’m focusing on a few of the cultural changes that have occurred in the last fifty years. We’ve talked about Work and Finances, now I’d like to look at Family Structures.
July 13, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
This is the 2nd part of a series of posts that I’m doing as our denomination explores what it means to be a church for the 21st Century. Many denominations have been joining in, so please don’t feel left out if you’re not Presbyterian.
July 07, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
So, I’m heading up a national Presbyterian committee which is studying the Nature of the Church for the 21st Century. We’re asking people five questions....
June 25, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
As we creatively think about the future, we need to come back from the edge of the cliff a bit, and not be so quick to create ministries where we cannot feed our families.
May 24, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
If I had one word to describe the Unconference (#unco11) experience for me, personally, it would be cathartic.
May 13, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Today is the day of my father’s funeral. He died last week. Here’s a sermon that I preached last weekend in Colorado…
April 21, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I like that we have a God who needs—just like a baby girl who is being baptized, just like a grown man who is facing death—we come to this Holy Week knowing that we have a God who needs. And when we realize that, we understand something about the humanity surrounding us.
April 08, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Vienna Presbyterian Church (USA), one of the largest and most conservative Presbyterian Church (USA) churches in our area, is seeking forgiveness after the horrifying details of a sexual abuse scandal have come to light.
February 25, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Food is at the heart of our practice together. So it's important to remember that what we put on our tables can be an act of faith.
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt sits down with Peter Wallace for a wide ranging interview focused on her church in Washington, DC, her new book, and her view on youth and new media in the church.
February 08, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I’m writing a lot right now, but I’m underground. I’m putting something together that will emerge in book form some day… but I’m not one of those authors who can put up her thoughts on a blog while formulating a book.
January 30, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
In her sermon based on one facet of the multifaceted jewel that is the Beatitudes, the Rev. Carol Howard Merritt reflects on how Jesus' words can offer comfort and hope in any time of grief.
January 21, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I’m like so many moms who are fascinated by Amy Chua’s article comparing Western and Chinese moms. As I read her column, so many thoughts swirled around me. Guilt seems to be my most accessible emotion.
January 19, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
if you’re a church leader, consider this your invitation to the UnConference. It would be lovely to connect with many of you in real life.
January 07, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I have watched people take different positions when the church betrays them or their family. They can reject the church altogether. Or they can proclaim that they are “spiritual but not religious.”
January 04, 2011
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I always cringe when I hear progressives say, “Well, they just need more education” when it comes to political, sexual, or theological issues. Why?
December 18, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
“Men are attracted to male leadership. We need more men. We will hire a man so that men will attend our church.” True or false?
December 13, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I don’t think that all marketing principles should be whole-heartedly applied to the church. I think many people get exhausted by continuous marketing, and don’t want our congregations to adopt all of those principles that can leave people feeling manipulated and used.
December 08, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
"In this time of Advent, as we’re pregnant with expectation and all of these intense emotions swirl about us, as we long to see God’s reign, as we hope for a just and peaceful world, it seems that these messages are still important." Read on...
November 26, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
It seems like I have been in the midst of many discussions around diversity issues lately. The contexts have been different: in new church movements, denominational settings, academic discussions, conference planning, and pastoral hiring. The questions and resistance persist.
November 23, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
Often when churches are reaching out to people in their twenties and thirties, there is a tendency to expect them to become someone they are not before they walk into the door.... we cannot simply expect people to change who they are in order for them to fit in with us. It’s important to meet people where they are.
October 26, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
As the air becomes crisp, and we see the vibrant falling leaves around us, often people of faith turn their attention toward giving. Even while we get caught in the frenzy of holiday decorating and menu planning, we think about how to share the abundance of the year and how to teach our kids to give.
October 15, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
A friend of mine realized that she only had one friend who went to church. As someone who cares deeply about the church, she wondered why it was. And so she began to ask them, “Why don’t you go to church?”
October 06, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
I often write and speak about the intersection of technology and religion, and so I’m keenly aware of the benefits and the cruelty that can be generated at that crossroads.
September 16, 2010
The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
(PCUSA)
"When a church or nonprofit group engages in advocacy, when we need to get the message out about an issue like homelessness in our city, there are many things we can use when we put together a strategy." Read on...
