I have recently come to a realization that has helped me enormously in increasing my leadership ability when it comes to both the staff at Good Shepherd and younger clergy in the United Methodist Church…
Methodists gathered together because they were convinced that growth in holiness was most likely to happen in community.
We know that what we do here in Holy Communion is look forward to that day when life will finally be the way God wants it to be.
This is not an anti-technology diatribe. There are enough diatribes in the world, I think: talking heads, Facebook rants, raised fists and honking horns etching anger for a permanent moment of rush hour that hangs now in the universe reflecting our contorted faces back to us. What if I died in that moment? The moment of my life when my
God’s word is better delivered in obscurity than by celebrity. The greatest impact usually happens when no one notices.
It’s a mistake to criticize questioning by and in itself. An unexamined life is not worth living, and an unexamined faith will last about as long as Farrah Fawcett hair, Hammer pants, beanie babies, MySpace, “Gangnam Style” and every other grass that withers and flower that doth fade away.
Beginning at the point of our believing that it is God’s desire to forgive, confession becomes not a morbid discipline, not a dark groveling in the mud and mire of life, not a fearful response to a wrathful, angry God who is out to get us if we don’t shape up. Rather, confession becomes an act of anticipation, a response
New is unknown, and often we are afraid of the “what if” questions in our lives. But new is happening every day.
It began with Jesus, who invited twelve guys to quit their day jobs and enroll in a three-year intensive, seminary-level program. By following Jesus, these guys learned Hebrew Bible, pastoral care, prayer and healing, theology, missions and evangelism, preaching and economics. At the end of three years, Jesus declared them ready (in fact, he called them his peers) and commissioned
When we refuse to be silent we are saying that we have nothing left to learn or that God has nothing left to say to us.
Where haute couture fashion houses dominate and the Mona Lisa smiles, where the Notre Dame cathedral towers with long-held cultural memories of a famed hunchback and the Eiffel Tower beckons to retainer-wearing junior high tourists, where Rick and Ilsa looked out as the Nazis rolled in. What is the true narrative of Paris, a very old city with a colorful
But when we share faith with others, we don’t tell them what they should believe. We tell them what we believe – and more importantly, who we trust, which brings us once again to relationship.
I have found that this is a good way to keep before the family and the child the meaning of baptism and to remind the parents of the promise they made to God during the baptism to do all they can to raise their child in the faith.
I like my smartphone. I like Facebook (sometimes), Twitter, and email. I like accessing directions while I’m driving somewhere. You may be different, preferring a flip phone, cork bulletin boards and stopping at a gas station for directions. I understand that. Most of us live with one foot in both worlds, enjoying crisp Christmas cards in the mailbox and photos of loved
Jesus reminds us that if we keep a seed in our hands and clutch it with a closed fist, it will never grow. We must open our hands and let go of the seed. The problem is that many of us are living with closed hands. When we live like that, nothing can grow either within us or within others.
I think the deepest appeal of Wesleyan theology is that is heartily affirms a God who is truly good and sincerely loves all persons. God does not determine, God empowers, enables, encourages. And the message that God loves us and wants to empower us to love him back, as well as each other is a message of great hope.
For example, we often describe a “sacrament” as an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace, but then we limit ourselves by thinking of sacraments only in terms of the two which Christ established: baptism and the Eucharist. Wesley, on the other hand, prodded us to think more deeply and expansively about all the means of grace which, for
You may never know the great power that a simple word of love can have on a person, but I encourage you to share love with others. It will never leave my memory. Though a lot of time has passed through the years, the memory of a mentor’s words at a critical time in my life will never fade.
For many of us, when we read the Bible, we read it from the perspective of people who need encouragement, therapy, challenge, hope, or even love. These are all good things that we do, indeed, need. But usually these needs arise from a larger situation that involves someone or something hurting us. For example, we need encouragement because a boss
The heartbeat of the Church is Christ. We’re only here because of him; because of his love. Christ is the reason we are. Christ is all our reasons.
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