Presby-Musings

Years ago, I had a conflict with a church member and youth group volunteer who was spreading lies about me both in the church and in our community.  When the truth came out, and she knew that she had been exposed, she never returned to the church.   For several months, I did my best to try to arrange meetings, sent her emails, called and left voice messages on her phone and even sent her a written letter pleading with her to speak with me so we could be reconciled.  She never responded.   I eventually grew angry at her and stayed angry for a long time.  She'd done a lot of damage to my ministry and had done her best to divide our church.  Further, because of her unwillingness to work it out, the bad feelings between us simply festered.   I don't remember when exactly, but I eventually found myself feeling sorry for her.  Because of her shame over being caught in a lie, she'd lost her church family, her community suppor...

This week we are launching a new sermon series for the month of July--and if it sounds a bit familiar, you would be correct in assuming we've done something like this  before.  I say like this , because this is actually the second year in a row that we have scheduled the sermon series "At The Movies" during the month of July.  We did this for a couple of good reasons:  First, July typically is the worst month of the year for church attendance and so most churches just fold it up for the entire month.  But not us.  We decided to ramp up this month for the most interactive, creative sermon series of the year.  The second reason why we are doing At The Movies again, is because as Christians we need to learn a powerful lesson about the universe:  Everything is Spiritual.  We need to be able to look at the world around us, at culture, at art, at theater, music and even movies and be able to find the spiritual core at the center of it all. ...