Author: ericfolkerth

Eric Folkerth is a minister, musician, author and blogger. He is Senior Pastor of Kessler Park UMC United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Previously, he was pastor at Northaven UMC in Dallas for seventeen years. Eric loves to write on topics of spirituality, social justice, music/art and politics. The entries on this blog reflect that diversity of interests. His passion for social justice goes beyond mere words. Eric was arrested at the White House, defending immigrants and “The Dreamers;” and he’s officiated at same sex weddings. Eric was the 2017 recipient of the prestigeous Kuchling Humanitarian Award from Dallas’ Black Tie Dinner. (Human Rights Campaign) Eric has led or co-led hundreds of persons on mission trips to build houses and bring medical care around the globe, to places such as Mexico, Haiti, Russia, Guatemala, and Nepal. He is proud of have shephereded Highland Park UMC's construction of ten Habitat for Humanity homes, (and one Community Center) and helped forge an alliance with Habitat that led to the construction of 100 homes in Dallas, housing thousands of people. His wife, Justice Dennise Garcia, has 20 years experience as a state district judge and appelate justice in North Texas. First elected in 2004, she was the first Latina ever elected to a Dallas County state district bench, and she she left that position whe was the longest currently serving district judge. In 2020 Dennise Garcia was a elected as a Justice of the 5th District Court of Appeals for Texas. She is currently running to be Chief of the 5th District Court of Appeals in the 2024 cycle. They have the world’s best daughter, Maria, who is a practicing professional counselor in Dallas. Find links to Eric’s music-related websites, at the top of this site’s navigation menu.

600

November 1, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

So, apparently this is my 600th blog entry. Yikes. That’s a whompin’ load ‘o writing. My blog’s title, of course, is a riff on the old EF Hutton ads that ran during the 70s and 80s. If you watched TV back then, you couldn’t help but see these ubiquitous commercials. Here’s one version… They repeated […]

A New iTunes Single and Reflections on 50 Years

October 29, 2013.Reading time 30 minutes.

NOTE FROM EF:this entry has been expanded/updated over the years….EF I’m pleased to announce that my song “Sitting In the Trade Hall (11.22.63)” (1) is now available on iTunes as a single. iTunes link here. It’s a song I wrote some years ago, from the perspective of adults who lived in Dallas at the time […]

The Metaphor of Birmingham

October 25, 2013.Reading time 10 minutes.

As a Methodist preacher, I’ve always been humbled to recall that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was written, in part, to Methodist bishops. They weren’t the only recipients, of course. The letter was a response to previous statements from Alabama-area clergy of several Christian denominations. But at least two of […]

Heaven Would Be Twlight

September 25, 2013.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The Dallas Cowboys Are Losers

September 5, 2013.Reading time 7 minutes.

Update 12.30.13: Written in September…still true today….EF “Sitting back trying to recapture, a little of the glory of, well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of…glory days” — Bruce Springsteen The Dallas Cowboys are losers. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I mean it statistically. Many of us grew up […]

Awesome Clouds

September 2, 2013.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The Sisyphus of White Rock Lake

August 17, 2013.Reading time 7 minutes.

The Sisyphus of White Rock Lake Here’s a picture from today’s bike ride around White Rock Lake. For those unfamiliar, it’s up on the dam, looking south toward the spillway. There’s about a 60 foot grassy drop off to the right, and you can see a bit of the lake to the left. […]

Enough Culpability for Us All

July 30, 2013.Reading time 7 minutes.

As she often does my colleague, Rev. Christy Thomas has a blog well worth your time today. Her title is “Incarnational Theology and Corrective Rape.” As you might surmise, it’s a hard read. Like Christy, I invite you to read the New York Times article that inspired her. It talks about the horrific practice in […]

More Evidence that America’s "Mission Field" Future is Progressive

July 23, 2013.Reading time 9 minutes.

Several online friends sent this essay to me this week: Religious Progressives Predicted To Outnumber Conservatives, Survey Finds It’s well worth the read, and cites data that comes from the Public Religion Research Institute. A few standout quotes: “With each generation, the popularity of religious conservatism has declined. Forty-seven percent of the Silent Generation (ages […]

Keep Moving Forward. Don’t Look Back.

July 21, 2013.Reading time 20 minutes.

For ten years, Dennise and I have lived with the memory of one of the most terrifying journeys we ever took. It was a pre-GPS navigation world. It was a pre-digital-photography world too. But since we have both now, we recreated this journey the other day, such that we now have pictures to tell the […]