The word pastor comes from our job as shepherds. Of course, Jesus is the real shepherd, but we pastors try our best to represent him well as we seek to care for his flock. Jesus taught us that he’s the kind of shepherd who cares if a single sheep goes astray and wanders into danger, [...]
Eleanor and I were headed for a rare cup of coffee without the kids and during the five-minute drive, we encountered two different people who were angry over someone getting into the lane of traffic ahead of them. Eleanor and I actually let a couple of people in and then found a great parking place! [...]
In response to my earlier post about the difficulty of making space in a smaller church, Becky made this suggestion:
Have you thought of starting a new (small) church? I love the idea of small churches being so appealing that they multiply like bunnies.
It’s really a reasonable thing to think about too - a different model [...]
I had a wonderful opportunity to address pastors and elders from small churches at the Presbyterian Church’s biannual General Assembly on Monday. I really do believe in the ministry of small churches. By their definition, we are Trinity are now a medium-size church, but we’re still a lot smaller than many of the churches around [...]
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been troubled in my spirit… Is that good Bible language for spiritually messed up?
Our church has experienced a lot of growth lately and we’re having growing pains. That’s partly because our building is way too small. It was built in a time when a) churches didn’t have parking lots [...]
A recent study claims that kids in daycare have better immune systems than those with stay-at-home parents, possibly leading to a reduced likelihood of leukemia. See the New York Times article here.
This makes me feel a lot better about the various sicknesses that some of our church kids passed around recently. You see, as it [...]
Last week, I attended a “round table” of sexual assault survivors and members of the clergy. The honesty of the six women who had survived sexual assault was extraordinary - and extremely difficult to hear. But the hardest part of what they had to say was the part about how their churches had treated them. [...]
About a year ago, I was at a ministry conference and someone I had been talking to the day before came up to me and said, “I have a message for you, Steve!” “Uh, OK…” I replied. “The message is that you’re ministry is on hold until you can stop caring what people [...]
Last Sunday, many things went wrong in worship at Trinity.
Now we’re not one of those churches were everything is polished and perfect, but even we are not accustomed to the sheer number of small things that went wrong, from people being out sick to sound system glitches to bulletin information being wrong. And you know [...]
OK, I’m not a big Nintendo Wii player, but why are people so disturbed by this image of Jesus? Check out a blog entry about Mission Bay Community Church’s attempt to reach people by using the culture. The blog post by “Ryan” at the Two Small Coins blog does a nice analysis.
Our church used [...]
Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. I think everyone in this country owes him a debt of gratitude for raising the consciousness of a nation that has always prided itself on being the land of the free.
Well, it’s not over. Since I’m a white man, [...]
I’m sitting here in a huge group of Presbyterian Church pastors, and I’m struck by how real these people are!
If you’ve heard me preach or have come to my Bible studies, you know that being real is a biggie for me. I think that one of the biggest problems that the Christian Church faces [...]
“Can I have some apple juice?” my son Joshua asked.
“Sure,” I responded.
“DAD, HE ALREADY ASKED MOM AND SHE SAID NO!” my older son Johnny yelled.
Yes, Joshua has discovered the fine art of continuing to ask until you get the answer you want. Dave Barney, a system software director I worked for for a while, called [...]
Mark 15:15 says, “Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.”
Last spring another pastor said that he had a word for me: ”God has your ministry on hold until you can stop worryign about what other people think.” OUCH! Do I really let [...]
I’m on my way home from the Presbyterian Church’s Evangelism Conference. It’s clear to me that evangelism has really changed since the days when you could follow a script or hand people a booklet and they would make a decision to be a Christian. These days it’s all about having relationships with people and about [...]
A dream that was in the making for some time came true this week. Our kids’ choir sang the national anthem at a Sacramento River Cats game! They did really well. Click below to see and hear them:
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“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
- Isaiah 55:8-9
Our church is making an important decision about whether we should purchase a piece of property in [...]
We just had our Ash Wednesday worship service at Trinity this week.
It turns out that the traditional way to produce the ashes for the worship service is to save some of the palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday and burn them to create the ashes.
There’s something deep and true about it… Palm Sunday [...]
I had an interesting experience yesterday and it got me thinking… I took the boys to a McDonald’s with one of those “play place” areas with tubes and slides to play in. Well, as always seems to be the way, as soon as we got our food and were ready to eat, Johnny [...]
Hey, all! You can listen to my preaching now without even coming to West Sacramento! (Though it’s still better live, and you also get to hear and sing some great music.) Visit our church podcast.
And if you do, please leave a comment or two on there. The silence is deafening.