I have a sense of my first Maundy Thursday service, but I can’t quite place where it falls in my history. I was not a child, but not yet fully grown. Perhaps it was high school, or maybe somewhere in my college years. I have a sense of a fellowship area, a place not just…
Momentum for Life: Who is your Elisha?
This morning, we continue to explore what DRIVES us… the momentum that Christ is trying to build in our life to help us keep following him. Today, our focus is on how we INVEST IN RELATIONSHIPS. How are we reaching out and building up those who will be the leaders of the future? How…
Momentum for Life: God Loves You Too Much To Let You Stay There
God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there. Those words I heard from Anne Lamott in a lecture she gave at my seminary. God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there. I…
Inward, Outward, Upward
Since the first Sunday in November, we’ve been talking about the “Already” and the “Not Yet.” We’ve been waiting for the day, for the moment to arrive, when Christ is born again in our hearts and minds and lives. But it is a kind of paradoxical waiting, because God has already entered human history through…
Ministry, Science, and Failure
I feel like I have heard it a thousand times: Ministry is an art not a science. It takes creativity, beauty, gifts and talents. There is the wild element of the Holy Spirit that keeps things from being precise and measurable (as much as we try). But friends, I think I remembered tonight that ministry…
Face-to-Face
There is a struggle and a tension I have with facebook. If I am going to be honest, it is one of my primary sources of news. It’s a place I get information and get informed and pass along the world to others. And so sometimes, I use it as a vehicle for naming realities…
Singing for Peace
As we continue to wait for the one who has already come, the birth of Christ into our world and our lives, we are so close we can almost taste it! Maybe your lights are up and the tree is decked out. Maybe there are already Christmas cookies sitting on the countertop and presents under…
Hopes and Fears
Awaiting the Already. As church, we are exploring this book, written by a pastor who served here in Iowa. And he invites us to look at the Christmas story through new lenses. Over four weeks, we pull apart each gospel: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and explore what they have to tell us about how…