Presby-Musings

I was reading today from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 28 to be precise--the passage where the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to his disciples.  He tells them to "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."  But right before the Great Commission there are these verses:   16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Seriously? Some doubted?   That verse has always perplexed me.  These were the eleven remaining disciples, mind you.  They were the ones who saw Jesus taken, many of them watched him beaten within an inch of his life, still others watched him die.  And then he appears to them miraculously, risen from the dead.   They all worshipped him on the mountain that day.  The word that's used here in Greek ( proskuneo)  is the same wo...

This week I am preaching the conclusion of the sermon series, "The Missionary Next Door: learning to be a witness where you are." Before we get in to the text and start digging around, let me ask a question:   How good are you at picking up on non-verbal cues? Non verbal cues are the subtle facial expressions, body language and gestures that tell you what someone is really thinking even when they may not be speaking. Most of us have at least some experience with these kinds of things. How can you tell if someone is really listening to you?  If they are wearing a shirt like this:  They probably aren't listening. Just a hunch. How can you tell if someone is lying? "They're a politician and they're talking..." probably went through your head right then.  It went through mine.  There's something to that, to be sure. What about this?  Think about a moment when someone communicated their faith to you without saying a word. Recently, I was...

This Sunday I am finishing up the sermon series that I've been preaching on Evangelism. I felt so strongly that this sermon series needed to be preached at my church, and I have been praying that God would use it to spark the desire for evangelism in the hearts of our people.  The first week of our series we talked about how we need to connect with our story and learn to tell it.  The second week we discovered that God doesn't need us to spread the Good News that Jesus is risen and Creation is getting redeemed, but God loves it when we join him in doing just that.  This week we are seeking to answer this "Big Question:" Jesus commanded his disciples to be evangelists and disciple-makers.  What does that look like for us? I think that a lot of Christian-types would agree that Christians should know and tell their story.  There are probably a few more who would agree that God wants us to join him in the work of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ...

Presbyterians get unfairly criticized for a lot of things.  We have been called "the frozen chosen" because we are Calvinists (sort of) and have a history of being un-fun.  We also get criticized for over-analyzing everything and forming too many committees to make decisions. Well, that last bit was not unfair. We deserve to be criticized for that. But one accusation that I have actually had leveled at me by some of my--shall we say-- not Reformed colleagues is that Presbyterians don't practice Evangelism.  When I protested that this was patently untrue, they responded by saying, "Well, you believe in all of that predestination stuff, so you think that you don't need to evangelize." "All of that predestination stuff" means that some Presbyterians adhere to the doctrine that God not only knows who has been "elected" to be a Christian, God made them that way--sort of hard wired them to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ and jump rig...