Our staff took a retreat in August and we’re about to retreat in Advent. We gathered to pray and plan where we would need to go this year. My friend, the Rev. Joanna D’Agostino from Lakewood Congregational gave a sermon on Jeremiah 17:7-8, “Like a tree planted by water.” She stated how it’s good to… Read More »
Fall 2022
Dear Church! This fall we have a lot of great things lined up! The Worship Team wanted to explore what it means to be a Christian Community. That’s the over-arching theme this fall as we explore various aspects of our Christian Community including it’s purpose, implications and our own roles and obligations Our first exploration will be called Beautiful Together. Being… Read More »
PASTOR’S CORNER April 2022
Spring is hypothetically here, although as I write this the snow is coming down on this Tuesday morning following Easter. We’ve closed the books on the Good Enough series, where we learned how to set the bar a little lower and give ourselves permission to rest. We’ve asked God for guidance in fixing the things… Read More »
January 2022 Pastor’s Corner
I’ll structure this in our Herrmann Brain Dominance (from our Project Worship Series) as a reminder and as a way to cover all the ways of communication. Here we go! YELLOW (Idea/why): The idea of this season is: More Light and Truth. We’ll talk about the importance of the bible. We’ll do a little Christian… Read More »
January 2021 Pastor’s Corner
Happy New Year, church! We have lots of fun stuff coming up in this fresh and exciting NOT 2020 year! We had a great year for worship despite everything. Our livestream over the past 9 weeks (not including Christmas Eve) averaged 136 live viewers between our Facebook and website. One pastor friend of mine said… Read More »
A Vision of the Future
My music folk were hanging and planning some future worship when our choir director Jim asked, “So… what’s like the future of the church? Where are you taking us?” Sometimes the words just aren’t there. That’s why we invented art! The picture on the left comes from the street artist Banksy. I love this picture.… Read More »
4 Keys to Membership
Our fall new member classes will be held Monday September 17 and 24 at 7 p.m. and New Member Sunday is September 30 at whatever service our new members attend. I LOVE new members! I love old members too… and people in general come to think of it. The most frequent question I get is… Read More »
How the World Changes
This picture may not look very exciting. For some of you, it looks like some of the church you know sitting around our wonderful table in the new library. For others of you, it looks like strangers sitting around a table. To me, it looks like the world changing. This is our Hunger Outreach team… Read More »
My Story, Our Story, THE Story
My story. Our story. THE Story. This is my method of preaching. It’s how I think about and craft my sermons. Every sermon I deliver is some mix of these three moves. I love preaching. I almost always draw from my experiences and life history. That personal connection helps ground the Bible where it needs… Read More »
Three Things
I have been doing “Three Things” for a few years. I learned this process from The Rev. Mike Slaughter, a United Methodist Pastor at Ginghamsburg UMC down in the Dayton-area. The thinking behind the three things is this: aside from my normal duties of preaching, teaching, visiting, marrying and burying, I will set three goals for… Read More »
