Sermon Notes (Page 8)

In these last few weeks of the liturgical year, we journey through Luke’s Gospel and seek the face of Jesus. This week’s reading may be familiar as a group of religious leaders come to Jesus with a question about resurrection. They come with their own beliefs (or in this case non-beliefs) about resurrection, and we might imagine the difficulty of how to appropriately respond. This feels like an adversarial conversation; at least from one side of it. But perhaps one…

Each year, we consider the overarching stewardship–the ways we are spiritually inspired caretakers–of this church and this faith community. We are guided in this conversation over the month of October by the United Methodist membership vows: to support the ministries of the Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. In this week’s texts we see a parallel between the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Both men healed…

Each year, we consider the overarching stewardship–the ways we are spiritually inspired caretakers–of this church and this faith community. We are guided in this conversation over the month of October by the United Methodist membership vows: to support the ministries of the Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. We continue with gifts and in doing so look into our rich Wesleyan history. John Wesley famously gave a sermon entitled “The Use of Money,” published in…

Each year, we consider the overarching stewardship–the ways we are spiritually inspired caretakers–of this church and this faith community. We are guided in this conversation over the month of October by the United Methodist membership vows: to support the ministries of the Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. We continue with presence and I invite you to notice that we’re heading into the second week of our stewardship series and haven’t yet asked for your…

Each year, we consider the overarching stewardship–the ways we are spiritually inspired caretakers–of this church and this faith community. We are guided in this conversation over the month of October by the United Methodist membership vows: to support the ministries of the Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. We begin with prayer because there can be no Stewardship without first being in conversation with God. Prayer can be a quiet and personal thing, and prayer…

This is the last week of our worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. Those who wish may purchase the book, and it’s also available in the LJUMC library. The letters from the Apostle Paul are our earliest glimpses into the early Christian church. Far from the narratives of the Gospels and Acts, these letters are directed to various faith communities who had expanded and…

We are nearing the end of our worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. Those who wish may purchase the book, and it’s also available in the LJUMC library. Some of the loudest critiques from our non-theist friends about sacred Christian texts have to do with the more extraordinary and and even super-natural stories. Did Moses really save diverse wildlife in an enormous ark during…

We are nearing the end of our worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. Those who wish may purchase the book, and it’s also available in the LJUMC library. As United Methodists and Christians, I think it’s a safe assumption that the Gospel stories hold particular significance for us. This is the Gospel, the Good News! In these stories are the proclamations that we are…

We continue our new worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. Those who wish may purchase the book, and it’s also available in the LJUMC library. It is my hope that people of faith regularly read from our sacred texts. We have shared various approaches to regular reading as a part of this congregation, and some of the resources can be found here. For any…

This week we continue our new worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. Those who wish may purchase the book, and it’s also available in the LJUMC library. It is surely safe to say that we all wish for deliverance from something. For some of us we may wish for deliverance from the temptation of sweets or carb-heavy foods. Others may wish for deliverance from…

This week we transition from our series on the Apostles’ Creed to our new worship series “Inspired” based on the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans. In this book, Rachel draws on the best in recent scholarship and uses her well-honed literary expertise to examine some of her favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by…

This week we conclude our Worship series on the Apostle’s Creed called “We Believe.” During this time, we have been exploring one of the most common affirmations of faith, originating from some of the earliest Christians. This week as we conclude our Worship series, we end by claiming what we believe when our life in this world comes to an end. Surely every person has moments in their lives when they wonder what happens next. Whether we are Christians who…