Wow, I am thrilled with your responses to the “Celebrate and Dream” forms! This past Sunday, we received tons and tons of feedback. Over the next couple of weeks the staff and session will be compiling all of the responses into common themes. Then we will be sharing with you, the congregation, the main themes....
I can’t wait for this Sunday. It’s going to be really fun. Yesterday we sent out a large mailer. It should arrive at your home any day now. The mailer includes three parts that I hope you’ll spend time reading: 1) A Visioning Letter: This letter explains what we are doing on Sunday: spending time discerning what...
Hello from New Orleans! Well, almost. I’m an hour outside of New Orleans at a conference center. Each year, I take a total of two weeks for Continuing Education. In July, I headed to a conference at Whitworth University that focused on preaching and teaching. Now I am attending a CREDO conference that is sponsored...
This Sunday is World Communion Sunday. Many churches around the world will join together in the Lord’s Supper as a sign of our unity in Christ. World Communion began in 1933 and grew in popularity during World War II. Pastor Donald Kerr notes: “The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give...
A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with the Dean of Union Theological Seminary. I met him at the Charlotte campus of the seminary. While walking into the school I noticed a very unique cross on the front lawn. (pictured above). Look closely at the picture of the cross. What do you notice? As...
“You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” -Deuteronomy 10:19 We have all experienced times when we felt like a stranger. Perhaps it was when you traveled to another country where you did not speak the language. Maybe it was when you started at a new school or job...
It was exactly a year ago that my family was evacuated from Tampa in preparation for Hurricane Irma. Our home was near the water and was in a mandatory evacuation zone. At that time they were expecting storm surges between 8 and 10 feet (i.e. almost as tall my house!) We left late in the...
This past summer my family spent a week at a beach in North Carolina. The house that we stayed at had a canal in the backyard. Zoe and Riley noticed this and immediately began begging to go fishing. They each had a child sized fishing pole (pink, of course). And they assured me that...
Sarah and I took the girls on a trip to Colorado recently. We traveled to a section of the state that I had never been to before- Durango. This is a remote area! We flew into Albuquerque, New Mexico because it was the closest major airport. Then we drove 4 hours into Durango! It was...
At the end of last week’s sermon I asked for the congregation to pay attention to the times that they “woke up” to God’s presence in their life. In Jacob’s story, he thought that he was completely alone; running from his problems and his troubles. As he slept in the wilderness with a rock for...
