Church Blog (Page 4)

Some of our small groups are recognizing St. Patrick’s Day as they meet this afternoon. I believe that Ken Coleman’s group is having all green foods—hopefully, that is not an incentive for anyone to clean out any science experiments from the back of the refrigerator. Robert Ward’s group will meet at our house, where we will have some traditional Irish dishes. It is fun to do things like that on what is more or less a second-class holiday in this…

This week, Focus Press’s podcast, “Think Deeper,” tackled the issue of when someone is ready to be baptized and ancillary topics. Among those was the subject of rebaptism. That got me thinking about this area; we just published an article in this space a few weeks ago dealing with what a person needs to know prior to baptism, so it seemed good to deal with rebaptism in particular. Many of you have heard me speak about this over the years,…

As a preacher, you become more familiar with death that most people. In some cases, that is through visiting someone, maybe even sitting at the bedside, as they are getting close to the end of life; in others, it might be through performing the memorial service, hopefully helping grieving loved ones to find some measure of comfort. And all that has only increased in frequency since I became a hospice chaplain a couple of years ago. But whether or not…

Between the time of my writing this toward the end of the week and your reading this on Sunday morning, I will have celebrated a birthday. It got me to thinking about what is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the church: Pentecost. We read the story in Acts 2. The Holy Spirit descended and filled the disciples who were gathered together, empowering them to speak in languages they had never learned. This caused a great crowd to gather…

Last week, as many of you know, we held a Valentine’s Day banquet here at the church building for the first time since before the pandemic. Events like this are a good marker, I think, of trying to get back in a regular rhythm of life and become more active. It is essential that we keep striving for that, because—like a lot of churches, and a lot of aspects of life more generally, for that matter—it is no secret that…

As I write this, we are planning to celebrate our Valentine’s Banquet this weekend. (By the time you read this, assuming it is the print copy on Sunday morning, it will have already happened.) I am really looking forward to it, as it is yet another one of those things that has not been done since the pandemic that just sort of slipped away when we began to get back to normal; it’s a good sign when we revive things…

This article was written by Wes McAdams and published on his blog, “Radically Christian,” earlier this week. I thought it was timely on a couple of levels. For one, as we study through OT history in our Sunday morning Bible class, we encounter Israel making idols and worshipping false gods; this helps to clarify why even those graven images that ostensibly represented YHWH, like the golden bulls of Jeroboam, were forbidden. More importantly, for all of us, it gives practical…

Baptism is a tremendously significant event. In baptism, God promises to extend his grace to the penitent believer, and we appropriate all the blessings associated with the saving work of Jesus Christ. We had several baptisms last year. It is a wonderful thing that these people made the commitment to follow Jesus, had their sins washed away, and were added to his church. Now, baptism is more than just experiencing any sort of rite involving water. For one thing, the…

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is dealing with the abusive practice of the Lord’s Supper in the church in Corinth. In the context of criticizing them, one question he asked was, “Do you despise the church of God?” (1 Cor 11:22) That’s something worth meditating on. Hold that in the back of your mind and ponder it for a moment as you consider another question: what are the great tragedies facing the church of Christ in our day and time?…

I read a post online earlier this week by a preacher acquaintance of mine to the effect that putting Christmas at the beginning of winter was a mistake—the best part of the season is out of the way just a few days in with nothing but dreary days stretching out in front of it for the next few months. As a confirmed lover of winter, I completely disagree with the premise; I might be the only person in Liberty County…

There is an old story, a sort of parable—I am not sure of its original source. But many of you have likely read it before. If so, you are going to read it again. It is about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to do and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry because it…

It seems hard to believe, but this is the final Sunday—the final day—of 2023. Tonight at midnight, we will close the book on this year and then embark on 2024 (the beginning of our seventh year here, incidentally, which is also hard to believe!). We are probably all focused on the challenges of the coming year, the changes we would like to make, the improvement we would like to see. As we think about that as it relates to the…