Having spent several days last week at the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, well, Methodism is on my mind.One of the more common refrains heard at this or virtually any Methodist meeting is that doctrine divides while love...
This is my Vacation Bible School crew for 2011:We are in the middle of a program called Jump: Put Faith In Motion. This morning, my group and I were discussing today's bottom line: Jesus ROSE again so that you would know He is GOD.I briefly told about the crucifixion...
My son has helped me understand the difference between a guitar riff and a guitar solo. A riff is a recurring sequence of notes that forms the song's signature.A solo is longer and more improvisational. It occurs only once in a song.I think I like riffs better.So here...
At last Saturday's Rivergate concert, I briefly stood next to a man who struck up a conversation with me."You came to my house a couple of years ago to invite us to church," he said. "And I just want you to know that we've been coming ever since."Now: that visit was...
In 2008 and 2009, the Good Shepherd band played a series of concerts at the Rivergate Shopping Center.Under the name of "Thrive Alive," here's what it looked like: Well, Rivergate has asked us to come back and we've said yes.So this Saturday, June 11 from 6-9 p.m.,...
Here's what Julie and I looked like on June 9,1984, in Princeton, New Jersey.That day was hot, the preacher was sweating, the reception was crowded, I was nervous, but we were married.In the intervening years, we've lived in Hamilton, New Jersey; Georgetown, Kentucky;...
We've recently added a new feature to the www.gsumc.org website: you can watch a video of the sermon from the preceding week.Here's out you do it:1. Go to www.gsumc.org.2. Click on the "Media" tab at the top right of the home page.3. You'll see a screen full of...
In honor of our Comeback Kids series, I want to post on that area of life in which comebacks are the most vivid and immediate: sports.Here are five of the most sensational comebacks I have seen. In some cases, they made me leap out of my seat for joy. In others, they...
So we started The Comeback Kids yesterday. Along the way we discovered some common threads between Bruce Springsteen, PTL, and the prophet Haggai.Springsteen's haunting "My City Of Ruins" describes so well a land and a people in desolation: So yesterday John Pavlovitz...
"I think the story of how our new series "The Comeback Kids" came to "be" is an interesting one.After all, it's not often that a church will do a series based on the Old Testament book of Haggai. Yet that's what we're doing.In the spring of 2010, I enrolled in a class...