Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
A prayer guide for those who lead others on adventures. About a year and a half ago, two of the three churches I was leading at the time (Alexandria and Barree UMCs) united to form one new congregation (Hope UMC). During the two-year process leading up to the merger, the leadership team did a lot … Read more
Movie inspires viewers to keep dreaming! Last week, we watched The Astronaut Farmer. The movie made me think about dreams and creativity. A few years ago, I read John Maxwell’s Thinking for a Change, which includes a sad survey on the state of our creativity. The survey reveals that as we age, we become less … Read more
Life in places other than the mountaintop. The FOCs (Followers of Christ), the youth group of the Manor Hill United Methodist Church that I serve, joined other area youth for a hike at Trough Creek State Park. We ended up in three groups: those who did the mountain at a good pace, those who did … Read more
We have been approved for the adoption of a child from a foreign country by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Yesterday we received Form I-797C (all government forms seem to have form numbers!) from the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. The form simply grants us … Read more
We got our proposal edits back; now we must make lots of corrections! Last week we received our proposal drafts back from the editor at Asbury. Even though our mentor describes our work as “clean” (in terms of writing, grammar, etc.), there is still a lot of red! (Thanks, Judy! 😀 ). The red marks … Read more
Fasting is an overlooked ancient spiritual discipline that helps Christ-followers grow spiritually. I grew up in a tradition where fasting was an observed discipline. I grew up hearing stories of men and women who fasted, anywhere from one day to days at a time. In recent years, Joleen and I have been practicing the Wesley … Read more
Friday night’s Twila Paris concert with the World Vision Korea Children’s Choir was a great experience! Twila Paris’ concert tour came to Huntingdon, PA last night. We enjoyed hearing her sing some of her classic songs, including, “The Warrior is a Child,” “We Bow down,” and “He is Exalted,” as well as a couple songs … Read more
What if … we were to consider each day a blessing of God? Drew Carey debuted the new game show The Power of 10 last week. The public is asked different questions, polled and the contestants have to guess what percentage answered a specific way. The second airing asked a question something like this, “What … Read more
Football and leadership — learning leadership from coaches in the NFL. I have been a football fan since I was about 8 years old when I watched a game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. From that point on, I was a Cowboys’ fan. Over the course of the years, however, I … Read more
The mercies of the Lord are new every morning. The church is a short distance from home, so I usually walk there. Sometimes I haven’t taken a flashlight with me and when I get out of a meeting at night, a dreary night, I can hit a place of complete darkness. A bit of fear … Read more