Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
Looking at our blog now, you might think that posting pictures of Ethan has always been *easy* for us. 🙂 Truth is, we struggled with whether or not to post that very first referral picture last September. We ended up posting one (of the 6 photos we received) in the It’s a Boy! post. When … Read more
Life. Leadership. God’s Mission. Those are the areas we’ve chosen to write about on this blog. But those areas have developed over time. We started out simply posting the text of our sermons. Later, we began reflecting on, and writing about, leadership. Over the course of the past year, we’ve begun writing a lot more … Read more
We have our first Sunday in! And all went well. I attended the Saturday evening praise service at West Side, but the SPRC was gracious in lining up someone else to preach this week. I said a few words of introduction and made the announcements and prayer concerns (good practice for Sunday morning) followed by … Read more
A few weeks ago, I prepared a list of prayer points, at Centre Grove’s request, to help guide people in praying for us during this time of transition. I’ve updated the prayer points for this post and invite you to be in prayer for us as well as Centre Grove and West Side as we … Read more
Sometimes “tomorrow” is a bad word — “Instead of doing (fill-in-the-blank) today, I’ll do it tomorrow!” (i.e., procrastination). But, other times, tomorrow is an inspiring word. Tomorrow gives us the opportunity to dream, envision, and plan for the future. Tomorrow is an opportunity to take what we’ve learned yesterday and today and apply it on … Read more
Lifelong learning is a core value for us (see my post called Lifelong Learning). While our doctor of ministry programs, which have been a major part of our lifelong learning for the last 4.5 years, are just about over, we will continue to seek out new growth opportunities. Besides getting back to our reading pile, … Read more
Following up on what I wrote in Circuit Riders 1.0, I think what challenges and inspires me to be an effective leader is the early circuit riders’ sense of mission — they simply went wherever the people were! Lovett H. Weems, Jr. describes the pioneering spirit of the early Methodists in his book, Leadership in … Read more
Ilove history, especially the history of great Christ-following leaders who’ve gone before us. While reading about the UMC’s itinerant system for the previous post, I was once again challenged by the character and the courage of the early “circuit riders.” The term “circuit riders” has stuck, even though it has evolved over time (e.g., the … Read more
Not everyone may be aware of how pastoral appointments are made in the United Methodist Church (UMC), so we thought we’d share briefly a little bit about the process we’ve gone through in the last couple of weeks. In the UMC, bishops (and district superintendents) have the responsibility of making pastoral appointments. In our conference, … Read more
We’ve experienced a lot of change in recent weeks/months — bringing home a baby from Korea and becoming parents, and finishing our dissertations, and completing our doctor of ministry programs. If that wasn’t enough transition for one year, we’re throwing in some more. As we announced this morning in our worship services, we are moving … Read more