Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
I will post my “5 Stages of Sermon Preparation” tomorrow, but I want to interrupt my series of posts on preaching with a thought from today’s sermon. We looked at Mark 15.1-15. In Mark 15, Jesus is brought to Pilate by the religious leaders with a charge of high treason (as opposed to blasphemy, which … Read more
This post (and the next one) should probably come with the warning label, “Under construction.” And while I hope this process is well thought out, it doesn’t necessarily always play out so smoothly! So, with that out of the way … Sermon preparation must be understood as a process. But the challenge is that every … Read more
I have been planning to write more about preaching for a while. In fact, it’s been around 2.5 years or so since I wrote One Point Preaching (a review and interaction with Stanley and Jones’ book, Communicating for a Change) and StoryMapping (two of the most popular posts on the blog). So, I am going … Read more
Last Saturday, four of us from Centre Grove went to a leadership seminar called, How to Reach Unchurched People in Your Community, presented by Dr. Charles Arn, held at Krislund Camp. The presentation, as well as the content and research behind it, were very good! Some notes I jotted down … The church is in … Read more
One of the books on my rather aggressive Lenten reading list is Raising an Emotionally-Intelligent Child by John Gottman. The book was published in 1997 and I actually read it shortly after that, mainly due to my interest in emotional intelligence. I haven’t completely re-read it yet, but I have done a little reviewing. Based … Read more
We have a pile of books in one of our rooms, including the books I’m trying to read during Lent (incidentally, I’m way behind!). We’ve noticed recently that there’s one particular book that Sarah seems to be fascinated with. Maybe it’s the colors. Maybe it’s the fact that there are pictures of children on the … Read more
Sarah, who has been with us for about 4.5 months, turned one year old today. She continues to do well, and we are very grateful to have her in our family! Unfortunately, even though today was our day off, the day got off to a rocky start. Sarah, who usually sleeps till around 9:00 a.m. … Read more
My sermon last Sunday focused on Jesus’ time in the Garden of Gethsemane (“olive press”) found in Mark 14.32-42. In the midst of the agony Jesus was feeling, he was also greatly concerned for Peter, James, and John, who were supposed to “keep watch” with Jesus. I love the question Jesus asked his friends when … Read more
As I mentioned a few days ago, Leadership Network held a free online leadership event today called, Aha!, a 4-hour (plus) series of videos from around 40 different presenters talking about their aha! moments. I had the event running on my computer (to the TV) the entire time, but I didn’t catch nearly all of … Read more
We have blogged a bit about our journey through the ordination process of The United Methodist Church (see our last post or Our Journey Toward Ordination for the longer story). We are currently working through the final stages of this process, having been commissioned as Provisional Elders in June 2009. We are on target to … Read more