NEWSLETTER.

Back in the old days, you know, when I was the pastor of a church, I wanted to give my congregation a little lesson in Advent theology. I had our props person make me a five foot tall “1” and a matching “2.” I had them placed on the stage before church started and more than one person had questions. I ignored them. Our praise team even worked around the numbers during the singing portion of worship. When the message time arrived, you could see the anticipation on the faces of the crowd as they wondered, “Why is there a…

Everywhere we look right now we are invited to consider gratitude. I see pastors preaching good sermons on it, social media posts chiding me to embrace it, and stores urging me to buy something to express it. Gratitude is a good thing even though we sometimes get “marketed” during seasons like Thanksgiving. I try to be grateful. I do my best to send an actual thank you card when someone does something special for me. I try to say thank you when I order at a drive through or talk to customer service. I hope you do these things as…

“Are you less busy at the moment? I have a request for you to manage confidentially…” Did you get this message from me last Sunday afternoon? Some of you did. Thanks for reaching out and checking before making the mistake of getting involved. It was a scam! This has happened before, but this particular scammer did some homework, I think. The email address had several components that seemed legitimate, the cause seemed like something a pastor might deem important, and the distribution list was to people that I contact all the time. At least three shreds of truth but the underlying…

I was reflecting on the “Journey of Grace” NDI event we held last Saturday. Dr. Scott Rainey, our global NDI President, ministered to us powerfully. The story of how his family came to faith in Christ gives us hope for seeing those who are far from God come to know him. If you couldn’t be with us, I’ll summarize by saying that Dr. Rainey’s parents were as far from God as anyone you know, but a local congregation—more specifically a couple of dedicated servants of God in that congregation, built a relationship with his parents and they came to faith….

He blinked his bleary eyes open trying to determine if the sound that woke him was real or only a dream. He pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and crept toward the entryway. Peering out into the dim light of dawn, his worst fears materialized—they were surrounded. Tiptoeing back, he shook his companion awake, his panicked whisper describing the horses, chariots, soldiers, and swords he saw outlined against the horizon. His fears were met with words of comfort and a prayer as his mentor prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, that he may see.” Almost like magic, the servant could…

On the heels of our District Assembly, I will be spending the summer and fall unpacking the report I gave. If you’re like me, even if you enjoyed the report, it has already slipped from your memory! As a reminder, I landed on four areas of emphasis I’d like us to practice if we hope to reverse the declining trends of the Church of the Nazarene in the United States and Canada.  Those four components were: prayer, discipleship, the gospel, and being missional churches.   I’m going to begin with prayer as it meshes nicely with the “Praying to Pentecost”…

Does the resurrection still matter two weeks after Easter? You bet. Read on. I heard an illustration in a sermon once that went like this:  A large bald eagle spotted an otter struggling to cross an ice-clogged river. The eagle, sensing an easy meal, plunged downward and sank his talons into the struggling creature. What the eagle could not know is that the otter itself was nearly dead, frozen to a large chunk of ice. The eagle was strong, but not strong enough to lift both the otter and the ice. The story concludes with the eagle plummeting to its…

Brutus came to visit last week. Brutus is the Shepherd mix pup that belongs to Kassi, our son’s girlfriend. For the first 15 minutes of his visit, he scoured the house, nose to the floor, ears perked up, exploring room to room. Cats have a reputation for curiosity, but Brutus couldn’t relax until he’d checked everything over a time or two. Are you still curious? Do you challenge yourself? Do you still have spiritual and intellectual horizons to which you aspire? One of the dangers for post-modern Christians with our ready access to information, is that we lose our curiosity….

I’ve been on a few plane rides lately. Depending on the size of the plane, I often try to get the emergency exit row seats. I’m a little tall for the ever-shrinking standard issue airplane seat.  Inevitably, the flight attendant walks through the emergency row procedure with each of the folks seated there. If you’ve sat in one of these rows before, you know what I’m talking about.  Today as I first nodded my head and then gave the required verbal “yes,” I sensed a little nudge from the Holy Spirit. I began to think about the increased responsibility that…

Local is hot these days.  What I mean is, that our culture is moving toward “small and local” over “big and corporate.”  This is no surprise to you.  Everyone, it seems, touts “locally grown” or “artisan style” products these days.  Where my generation was enamored with finally getting a chance to have the fancy products of the big cities in our hometowns, now it seems that we’ve discovered that bigger isn’t always better and the small-town stuff we grew up with was pretty cool after all.   This notion, it seems, isn’t lost on the church either.  It turns out…