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David Sawyer, Jan Waples, and Anne Ogden have each posted a new column to the Oates Journal today.

Dr. David Sawyer presents a case study of a conflicted and discouraged congregation revitalized and transformed by the listening ministry of a new pastor in his column, "Stories and New Identity and Weeping Willow Church." Realizing that vocation is more important than location, Pastor Wendy used Appreciative Inquiry to help a congregation maintain its identity through a radical transformation.

In her column on Contemporary Fiction and Spirituality, "Getting a Grip: The Legend of Bagger Vance," Chaplain Jan Waples reflects on the Steven Pressfield novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, as a story in which the protagonist falls on difficult times and gets a second chance to overcome great odds.

In her meditation on Psalm 138 Anne Ogden reflects on camp assemblies in Vermont and quiet moments in a woodland chapel in Maine to reflect on sacred moments. "We all pay homage to the oldest and wisest inhabitant, an ancient spruce with a deep gash in her side," writes Anne Ogden. "She has suffered and survived. She is a healer, one who has experienced brokenness, and she shares her wisdom with the assembled spirits. She knows that the bodies that she and I and the others occupy are also temples, no matter what our state of woundedness, and that to dwell in them is to inhabit the holy."

To read all three columns, we invite you to go to the Oates Journal at http://journal.oates.org