It took a while to realize what I was missing. It does sometimes. It took sitting in a pew to allow the revelation to dawn on me. Everyone needs to be led sometimes: especially leaders. I loved pronouncing the opening line of the call to worship; I loved welcoming the faithful and the not-so-faithful to the communion table; I loved
We’ve started a sermon series entitled Intoxicated. The word comes from a misunderstanding about what was happening in the lives of the disciples when the Holy Spirit fell on them. It was such an inexplicable experience that those who were seeing the effects accused them of being drunk! But something else was going on. Jesus has promised them the Holy Spirit
When I first arrived at seminary, I was astonished at the number of Wesleyans I met. Wesleyans everywhere! Having grown up in the small but active Wesleyan denomination, I was gratified to see it represented so fully. Then, about a week into the semester, I began to realize something – all the Wesleyans I was meeting were Wesleyan, not Wesleyan.
The painting Reflections, celebrates the awesome process of changing into who we are and whose we are, God’s children, made in his image. God finds such delight in this process, especially when we reflect and acknowledge his grace within the journey.
In short, we need more Arminians with an edge. These are Arminians who understand that the claims of Calvinism and Arminianism are mutually exclusive, and they cannot both be right. They understand that there are important issues at stake and that there are large practical implications. Not the least of these is the very character and love of God. Does
David understood the important of leaving a legacy. He understood that each generation should stockpile resources for the next generation. He accepted that his own failures and inadequacies would prevent him from accomplishing everything he wanted to do during his own lifetime, but he used that fact as a motivation for the future success of those who would come after
Do you mind if we drive around a bit in the Word? I’d like to show pastors some points of interest that have changed the way I understand ministry. If you need to set your GPS, I’ll tell you that we’re going to start in 2 Timothy where we’ll pick up a three-letter key. Then we’ll stop in Luke 9
In the church, we often are so soft about what we are doing that we can’t speak to people about concrete objectives and goals. We can’t even tell whether we are doing well because we don’t know what doing well looks like. And, my son observed, we often seem more concerned about everyone liking us than speaking what we believe.
The challenge for the disciples was to be the bridge for someone else to experience justice. When Jesus called the disciples, he didn’t send them out in search of instant conversions. He gave them an example of living before telling. Doing before speaking. Go. Make. Baptize. And teach. This is one way in which Jesus was the incarnation of God.
Is anything too supernatural? Too mystical? Too great for God to do? Nope. Is it too hard for him to bend the laws of nature? Nope. He wrote them. You know what? You, too, have continual reminders in your life of not underestimating God. We have those reminders, items large and small, global and personal, to urge us not to
I returned recently from a trip to the beautiful hill country of north Alabama. While there I spent a day in conversation with Methodist clergy from there about leadership in the church. The questions we were grappling with are important for the future of any church in the Methodist family: What does Wesleyan pastoral leadership look like? Is there even
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” – Philippians 4:8 ESV To “set the tone” means: to establish a particular mood or character for something. So what? For many years, well,
And yet look at what Paul says in Philemon: “was useless; is useful.” And then he grows much more intimate by the time of Colossians 4 – faithful, dear brother, one of you. And I wonder: how do you go from that to that? From outside to inside? From failure to brother? From deserves death to becomes family? I think
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
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