I’m about halfway through a three-week vacation from my position as pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church. After 5-1/2 years as pastor with no more than two weeks off at any one time (except to have kids!), I started to feel tired, and it was taking more and more to recover. I later learned that psychologists [...]
I’ve noticed a big difference between the assumptions my 6-year-old son makes and the ones I made at the same age. I used to assume that everyone went to some kind of church. Johnny is surprised to learn that someone goes to church. He realizes that he lives in a post-Christian world.
I hadn’t realized this [...]
I have the week off from church so we were planning to worship at another church as we generally do. but t his week, Lydia is sick with some kind of stomach flu. Rather than leave Eleanor and Lydia at home alone, we decided to have “home church” today.
I put on some recorded hymns as [...]
During my vacation this year, I had the good fortune of being able to spend a week at my grandmother’s cabin at Donner Lake. And this year, my aunt had left a kayak for us to use. The previous night I had tried it out and taken my sons on a short loop in the [...]
Lately, my son Joshua has had some trouble with drawing on the floor, walls, furniture, and windows with crayons. We’ve always had an understanding that crayons are only to be used on paper, and he can answer the question, “Where do we used crayons?” “On paper, Dad.” But temptation strikes, and our little artist feels [...]
Yesterday afternoon, my kids were starting to get a little bit of cabin fever. It was hot, and the air had been smoky for most of the day, but by late afternoon, the air had cleared a bit and a cool breeze was blowing. “Why don’t you go outside and play, Johnny?” I [...]
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 [...]
My wife woke me up for morning prayer this morning and I went back to sleep. This was a bad choice because there’s a lot going on in my life and the life of our church right now. As a church grows, it can no longer connect everyone “automatically.” It’s a much more conscious and [...]
I was just reading Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotional for this evening, and it referred to Job 22:21. In the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), it says, “Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you.” In the NIV (New International Version), it says, “Submit to God and be [...]
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. [...]
I preached on sex, lust, and divorce on Sunday. Blech!
I knew that I needed to do it, but I sure didn’t like the idea of standing in front of a whole group of people and talking about sex. Heck, I don’t want to talk to a small group of people about sex. And [...]