This fall in Adult Sunday School, we will be reading and discussing a book entitled, Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity by David Felten and Jeff Proctor-Murphy. Originally Living the Questions was a DVD series (which I own) which was very popular amongst clergy. The authors realized (correctly, I think) that the “wisdom” […]
This coming Sunday is Peace with Justice Sunday, one of six designated special Sundays in the UMC. On each of these Sundays a special offering is taken and we are encouraged to build the worship service around this theme. The title of this week’s sermon will be, A Profound Ignorance, and I will be talking […]
A few years ago I found an obscure movie entitled Schultze Gets the Blues. It’s about a man in Germany who worked in salt mines all of his life and then in his early 60’s he and his friends all get laid off. They hang around in the local pub all day; they are bored […]
Pastor Jim’s Blog: During our work in the Beta-Vitality Committee we have generated all sorts of suggestions: reviewing our systems, creating shepherding groups, working on marketing, just to name a few. And as is always the case if suggestions are to turn into plans they require people committed to seeing them through. The Church is […]
At our last Beta-Vitality event the words above were identified as… evil. Well, not evil, but not helpful and to be avoided. If the church stays the same it will die. Change is a given – all of life is change and the task is not to set up some structure to fight the change […]
In our Adult Sunday School class we continue to talk about the story of our faith in an historical context. Hopefully not in some dry fact based way that we may have learned history in high school, but looking at the spirituality of our fore fathers and mothers. How did they relate to God? How […]
After Christmas, my sons Aaron and Kenneth and I went to see the movie, Interstellar. Wow! What a ride! Trying to keep up with the physics was effort enough – time and relativity, wormholes and ghosts that aren’t really ghosts but someone from the past and future communicating through a bookshelf. Really? The story, in […]
At our last Beta Vitality meeting we discussed Church Systems (the apostle Paul would probably talked about the body and its parts, and whether they were functioning well.) Church Systems are areas of ministry such as Evangelism, Finance, Youth Ministry; to think of these as systems is to consider how they work – is there […]
We have entered another new year…. What happened to the summer? Does anyone else feel that way? I usually feel as though I’m behind at least one season. I want to hold back time, as opposed to trying to get ahead. But I also know, entering the new year that it is a time to […]
Whenever new people come into a group, I always start with introductions and usually ask people to share something in addition to their name. Recently at Adult Sunday School, I asked the group, “What is your favorite part of this season?” Of course there were many things but by far that which was mentioned most […]
