Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
Desperate preachers pray. Desperate preachers pray a lot. But what do desperate preachers pray? I once posed a question in an online pastor’s forum/community, asking what they tended to pray in the minutes/hours before preaching. I don’t remember getting a lot of response, so perhaps this topic only interests me. 🙂 But it’s an opportunity … Read more
Acouple days ago, we gave Ethan a treat after lunch (a little bit of Easter candy). Ethan doesn’t eat much junk food so he doesn’t get much sugar, normally. But after his treat, he was too wound up to take his normal 2+ hour nap. He stayed in his room (mostly in his bed, although … Read more
I wrote a week ago that I had recently started using Twitter, a micro-blogging service (posts are limited to 140 characters). Since I started using Twitter, I’ve been comparing options for using Twitter (view my Twitter page here). So, for the benefit of people who may be searching for other alternatives, I thought I’d post … Read more
Six weeks after bringing Sarah home, we reflected on bonding the second time around. Now at five months, I recently visualized the difference in dynamics between the two experiences. When we brought Ethan home, Ethan entered a circle of two people, but when we brought Sarah home less than two years later, Sarah entered a … Read more
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
Jesus, consistent with the Old Testament, speaks unabashedly and repeatedly about wealth, greed and generosity. In Mark 12.41-44, Jesus relates a story comparing the giving of the rich to that of poor widow who gives two very small copper coins. Jesus comments … They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, … Read more