Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
I preached at the final service in the Clearfield Community Lenten Lunch series today. Here’s the gist of my message … Joleen, who hosted today’s service at West Side, read the Scripture. I hope people caught the contrasting points of the two writers. Romans 4.1-5 (NLT) Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish … Read more
You know the drill, one of your many rechargeable battery-powered gadgets needs recharging, so you plug it into its specific rechargeable device (after you find it!). A couple weeks ago, I plugged in my cell phone, and Ethan asked if my phone was dead. It wasn’t, so I said, “No, it just needs to be … Read more
Today, Joleen and I attended a seminar (a requirement of our ordination process) held at Wesley Forest, a United Methodist camp. The presenter for the seminar on “Planning and Leading Change” was Rev. Tom Berlin, senior pastor of Floris United Methodist Church (Herndon, VA). During the day, I posted several quotes on my Twitter page. … Read more
The use of preaching notes is a more technical aspect of preaching, and I thought it’d be interesting to reflect on how my use of notes has developed over the years. Of course, preaching notes are tied to one’s preaching approach. Some use manuscripts. Some use detailed outlines. Others use little or no notes. But … Read more
Toward the end of this post, I give details on a leadership event we’re attending tomorrow where I plan be “live tweeting.” You can skip to the end of this post for that info, or read about the process of how I came to try out Twitter. The Internet is a network of computers that … Read more
I love technological advances. In fact, I’ve often thought about the people who lived through much of the 20th century, how much development they must have seen during their lifetimes! With that in mind, some time ago, in a moment of reflection, I wondered what kinds of technological advances Ethan will see during his (and … Read more
One of the books I’m reading during this Lenten season is Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps. I think I first saw the book in the Cokesbury bookstore at Asbury Theological Seminary a few years ago. I thought it was a creative look at a different set of spiritual disciplines in the 21st century, specifically for … Read more
Sarah has been with us almost five months. When we first met her, she smiled and laughed a lot. But it struck us a few weeks ago, that she wasn’t laughing or smiling as much. We felt we had to work fairly hard to make her laugh. But I also realized today that Sarah is … Read more
Ilove hearing (not-yet-3-year-old) Ethan’s language develop. It’s fun to listen to the stuff he comes up with from time to time. And one thing is clear — he’s a preachers’ kid! 🙂 A couple days ago during breakfast, he was asking me if I was going to “another church” (we live next to West Side, … Read more
I am writing a series of posts on preaching. This is the third one, and a follow-up to the last one, The Preaching Process. The first one is The Preaching Challenge. In the last post, I began writing about sermon preparation and mentioned that I have developed five words to help guide me through my … Read more