Presby-Musings

Because of the recent sermon series I'm preaching, I've been thinking and writing a lot about the Church this week, and what it means to be part of a faith community.   If you are interested in engaging in the sermon series, you can check out the first installment by CLICKING HERE .  I was reading the newest book by Bruce Feiler this morning and something he wrote about the state of relationships in our current culture jumped off the page at me:   "We have fewer friends, studies have shown, fewer people we can confide in, fewer people we can turn to in times of trouble.  Depression rates have surged; unhappiness is rampant; suicide is at an all time high."   Could it be that the more we trade face-to-face engagement for screen time, and virtual connections, the farther apart we get from others, and the more alone we feel? The ground breaking psychologist Erich Fromm offered these prophetic words that speak directly into this struggle:  "We ar...

One of the many things that seems to be troubling Christians these days is the rise of the so-called "Nones"--people who claim to have no religious affiliation at all.  In fact, it's been widely reported that "None" is the fastest growing religion in America.   However, there is a trend that ought to be troubling Christians even more.  I read an article not that long ago about the ever-increasing number of people who stop going to church every year.  In this article they called them the "Dones"---as in they are done with church.   I've talked to more than a few people who are part of the "Dones," and listened to the stories of how they got to the point where they no longer wanted to be part of a church. Almost all of them cited the same reasons.   They talked about churches being filled with hypocrites, and how they were turned off when pastors asked for money.  They also shared how they felt churches had become too political, t...

I've been sitting in the lobby of the dentist office where my kids go to get their teeth cleaned and such.  It's easily the most magical dentist office lobby I've ever seen.  Seriously, it looks like a Disney attraction.  It has a jungle theme and there are resin figures of giraffe, meerkat, a large elephant eating popcorn and a ring-tailed lemur on the ceiling.  There is a huge TV playing a kid's movie, iPads for kids to play video games.  There's even a TV in the corner with "adult" programs.  And there's free wifi.   I watched my littlest kid getting some pretty awful work done on his teeth one day.  I was standing on the other side of the door looking through a window.  He had on cool tinted googles and was playing video games while looking at a screen on the ceiling.  While getting his teeth messed with.   The dentist I went to as a kid once numbed one side of my mouth to pull a tooth and then started pulling the t...

We are at the end of a sermon series for the month of May, entitled Jesus and We.  The basic idea behind this series is pretty simple.  We're wrestling with what it means to be a community of faith that lives into the hope of the Resurrection.  Christianity in America has become decidedly self-centered.  Christian book stores are filled with all kinds of self-help books on all of the things you can do to become a better Christian.  Far too many churches in America espouse a Jesus and Me kind of theology.   But what we know from Scripture, from the teachings of Jesus and from experience itself is that it's not all about Jesus and Me.  The Church is about Jesus and We.  Church is more than just a place you go, it's who we are.   Today we're going to be concluding our sermon series with a sermon entitled, "Anything Short of Sin," and we're going to be talking about what it means to do whatever it takes to reach people with the Good New...

23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching. - Hebrews 10:23-25 Even in the first century, when the Church was barely fifty years old, people were already giving up on Sunday worship.  The writer of Hebrews indicates that some Christians decided that getting together with other believers to sing, pray, break bread and hear some teaching from the Scriptures wasn't really working for them.  Maybe they didn't like the songs that were being sung ( "Why do we always sing those boring, old psalms?" or "Those newfangled praise choruses from Antioch just say the same thing over and over again!" ).  Or perhaps they didn't care for the pastor's style of preaching ( "Does he really...