As we round out the end of our “True Presence” annual focus, we can start to look at what is coming with the new annual focus year. Our annual focus for the 2023-24 Church year that will start on December 3rd is going to be “A Jesus Centered Community”. That phrase hopefully sounds familiar. It…

Our annual focus year for “True Presence” is coming to a close. As we look back on the past year, there has been an attempt to show that God is truly present with us, and also that we, guided and empowered by the Holy Spirt, are the presence of God for so many of our…

When you look up the phrase “To Kingdom Come…” you find that it’s a euphemism for “into the next world.” So when someone says, “I’m going to blow you to kingdom come…” they are meaning that they are going to make you go to the afterlife. It is an interesting phrase because of it’s bad…

I just got back from a meeting at a local coffee house called Red Eye coffee. While I was there I bumped into several people that I know. This particular coffee house started off as a ministry of a church in town and as such, it gained the patronage of several fellow church types like…

Someone stopped me yesterday as I was walking through campus. She wanted to pitch me the idea of donating to an endeavor to help children with cancer. As a part of her pitch, she asked me what I did. I told her I was a pastor. She asked me what the “mission” of our church…

Re- It’s a prefix that means to do over again. There are things about “re” that we don’t like. We don’t like having to do things over again. That usually means that we’ve failed the first time. And so when we hear the word “Reformation” we like to ignore the “re”. We like to think…

“War…what is it good for?” That line itself probably is enough to evoke memory of Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit. The lyrics continue, answering the question, “absolutely nothing.” The screens of our cellphones, tablets, and televisions have been showing us images of war for quite some time now. We have witnessed war in the Ukraine and…

Last week from Thursday to Saturday, I was in Orlando with one thousand forty of my closest friends from the Florida Georgia District. We were together at the President’s Equip Conference, a conference that is held every three years and invites pastors, teachers, DCE’s, lay people, and everyone else to gather and think about a…

When I ask people what they would like to read in the Bible, many times they will come up with the Book of Job. I’m not exactly sure what it is about the book that attracts us to it, but there certainly is an attraction to it. The book itself is somewhat shrouded in mystery.…

An aged Paul sits in a room accompanied by a Roman centurion. Both of them are quiet for the time being, Paul is perhaps writing some notes to himself for a letter that he will dictate later to a scribe so that the letter can be sent to Philippi. As if doodling, Paul writes out…