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Norman Kolenbrander

Essays

Remembering My First Communion

On a leafy Sunday morning, the girls, adorned in lacy white dresses, and the boys, decked out in immaculate suits and ties, excitedly joined their families in a colorful parade to Our Lady of Grace on Avenue W in Brooklyn, New York. Our son’s second-grade friends and their parents had spent weeks preparing for the big day – First Communion. After the church service, joyous celebrations resounded amidst backyard grape vines, fig trees and colorful lanterns. The term “first communion”…
Norman Kolenbrander
January 1, 2019
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A Visit to St. Nicholas

by Norman Kolenbrander St. Nicholas Orthodox Church is located above The Mystical Rose Catholic bookstore, across from Van Den Berg's Gift Shop on the busiest shopping street in my town, Pella, Iowa. It is the twenty-first century, after all, and we have our own little smattering of diversity to prove it. A friend and I decided to join their congregation for the St. Nicholas Day liturgy, the feast day of their namesake, on December 6. We met under the tower…
Norman Kolenbrander
January 1, 2013
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Be All That You Can Be

We want our kids to be all that they can be. We read descriptions of "tiger moms," dictating their child's every move to gain maximum results. We observe the phenomenon of "helicopter parents," constantly hovering to protect, defend, and enable their children to achieve their heart's desire So how hard should we push? What kind of standards do we want our children to meet? In some circles, kids are supposed to train like Olympic athletes, study like Ph.D. candidates, perform…
Norman Kolenbrander
August 1, 2011
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Take a Poet to Lunch

"How do you find all that time to read?" a friend asks. "It's my job," I respond. "As a minister, I am a servant of the Word. Words are my tools. I need to keep my toolkit well stocked." This calls not only for serious ongoing study of the scriptures, but an immersion in that grand stream of poetry and prose that has issued from pens and presses for thousands of years. Each word is precious. Each word is dangerous.…
Norman Kolenbrander
August 1, 2010
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Opening the Door

Norman Kolenbrander I've decided it's time to "come out of the closet." No, I am not about to leave my loving wife of forty-four years for a same-sex partner. I'm coming out to stand in solidarity with gays and lesbians who have all too often been pitched out of the church either by default or design. As a pastor in the Reformed Church in America, I seek to be guided by the word of God as expressed in scripture and…
Norman Kolenbrander
February 15, 2007