Church News (Page 10)

In these last few weeks of the liturgical year, we journey through Luke’s Gospel and seek the face of Jesus. This is the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year and we will celebrate Christ the King Sunday. What does it mean to speak of the Christ who reigns, or Christ the king? I believe that Jesus redefines what it means to be king. The one who reigns over us is the one who was tried as a criminal, who was…

In these last few weeks of the liturgical year, we journey through Luke’s Gospel and seek the face of Jesus. What are you distracted by? That’s a question underlying our text this week. What is it that draws your attention away from your call to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? This is not to say that followers of Jesus aren’t allowed to enjoy the beauty and wonder that this world has to offer. Indeed,…

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…