Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed couple of weeks.
Well, the trip Jill and I have been planning for over a year finally happened. As you may have noticed, you have not received a note from me over the past couple of weeks because, on November 1, Jill and I flew to Israel where we spent nine days traveling the country making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
Well, as I write this letter, Jill and I are just a couple of days away from getting on an airplane to fly to Israel. Yes, this is a trip we have dreamed about for years and we are finally going to visit the land that we have studied so much about and the land where so much of our faith is centered.
All…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
This past Tuesday morning, I attended a breakfast meeting in Kansas City, Kansas. This meeting was actually an annual fundraiser event for a ministry called Mosaic. Mosaic is a ministry that seeks to help the intellectually challenged. When I was a kid, we called these people “retarded.” In school, these…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
As you may or may
not know, Salem is in the beginning stages of launching our
stewardship campaign
to raise money for our annual operations budget and to fund an additional staff
person for three years plus renovate our sanctuary. It is called, One Campaign – Two Appeals.…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
Have you ever gone somewhere and as you arrived realized you were underdressed? You know, you wore jeans and a sweater and everyone else is wearing dress clothes. It can be embarrassing, but in today’s world, most people don’t get too upset about dress codes and most often are very understanding and…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
We all have excuses for not being active in our faith, don’t we? I hear them a lot, “Oh, Pastor, sorry we weren’t there on Sunday, but the boys had a football game.” Most of the excuses can be summarized in a statement that literally means “Pastor, we won’t be able to help at that service…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
All my life I have resisted authority figures. I think it is because I am a child of the 60’s. You remember those days, don’t you? Or, if you are too young to remember them, you surely have read about them. The theme of the 1960’s was resistance. We resisted everything in those days. We resisted…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
As I prepare for my sermon this coming Sunday, I have decided that the theme of the week will be “Life isn’t fair!” Our Gospel text is Matthew 16:1-20 and our Old Testament text is Jonah 3:10-4:11. Both texts focus on how unfair God’s ways are. In the Jonah story, Jonah just wants to die because…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
If you remember, last week I wrote about how Jesus taught his followers to live together in a healthy and honest community. In our text last Sunday, Jesus offered his way of dealing with the conflict that will inevitably creep into all communities, even communities of faith. On paper, Jesus’ way of dealing with…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
In our Gospel text for this Sunday (Matthew 18:15-20), Jesus offers his followers a way of dealing with conflict in the church community. It is a formula that many of us don’t like because, if truth be told, most of us would prefer to ignore conflict, and if we have to deal with it, we would rather deal with…