Category: Minister’s Blog

When I was in school, I never enjoyed doing group projects. I didn’t like depending on other people to get work done. If I thought the project could best be done my way, I had a hard time giving up my plans for the sake of the group. As the church, we are called to the group project of advancing the kingdom of God. But just like my reluctance to do group projects in school, sometimes our personal agendas and feelings can get in the way of completing the work we are called to do. This Sunday we will be looking at the formation of the church in the book of Acts. What we see is a united group seeking to advance the gospel. A group which was even willing to sell their lands and houses to insure the needs of the community were met and the mission of the church accomplished. We will look at what we as the church may need to give up today in order to complete our group project. This Sunday is also our fourth Sunday worship service and the beginning of our new Sunday school class in the parsonage at 9:00 before the service. Hope to see you all then!

It is difficult to get out of our comfort zone, even if it is for our own good. There are many times that we recognize we need to make a change, but it is too hard to break out of our routines and step into a new future. This Sunday we will be looking at the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda. The man Jesus encounters had been ill for 38 years and had been waiting at the pool for healing. But before Jesus heals him, he asks “Do you want to be made well?” The answer seems obvious. Often times we are faced with the same question. Do we really want to be changed by God? Like the man at the pool, Christ offers us healing. But do we really want to be made well and move into the new future that is possible with God? Rather than lying by the pool and simply hoping for change, we need to do what Jesus instructs the healed man to do. Embracing the grace of God, we need to get up and walk.

Many of us have someone who has deeply impacted our spiritual journey. Someone who has made a special effort to demonstrate for us was the grace and love of God looks like. This Sunday we will see how Jesus took the time to reach out to those who so desperately needed his healing touch. Despite the many demands placed upon him, Jesus was not too busy to give his attention to individuals who had long been overlooked. I hope you will join us this Sunday for our new fourth Sunday worship service. We will be challenged to follow the example of Jesus, reaching out to that one in our lives who is in need of God’s grace.

It is never easy to tell people things they don’t want to hear. We have a tendency to avoid difficult conversations whether it be in our individual relationships or in the church context. We tend to stray away from engaging in dialogue on social and political issues for fear of creating controversy. This Sunday we will look at the ministry of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a prophet who was called to share a difficult message often in dramatic ways to an audience that did not want to hear it. But what we see in the example of Ezekiel is that we cannot forsake our responsibility to be a voice for God simply because we fear how the message will be received. To be a prophetic voice in this turbulent world, we must be willing to speak even when it is difficult.

Home improvement projects for me are often agonizing. I am excited to begin them, but once the work gets difficult and things start to go wrong it is easy to walk away and not finish. This Sunday we will be looking at the book of Haggai. We will see the people of Judah struggled much like me when they returned home from Babylon and began to rebuild the temple. While they started strong, their enthusiasm waned, and they left the temple unfinished. Too often this is what happens in our spiritual lives as well. Our commitment to finish what we start with God can falter. But just as God stirred the hearts of the people of Judah to complete the work they had begun, so too God stirs our hearts to reignite our commitment and enthusiasm to complete the work God has set before us. And with God, no project is impossible.

When I was young, I was afraid of the dark. I always needed a night light because I feared what monsters could be lurking in my bedroom at night. That light gave me a sense of peace. It defeated the power of the darkness. Throughout Scripture we find the imagery of God as light. God who separated the light from the darkness. God who is a light in the world. God whose light cannot be overcome by darkness. Anyone paying attention to the news in the past few weeks has seen the power of darkness. And like a child at night, we can fear the darkness will overwhelm us. But this Sunday we will see that with God as our light, a light that shines in each of us, there is no darkness which can overpower us.

Last Sunday we talked about how each of us are called by God to be actively working to advance God’s kingdom. This Sunday we will be talking about the first steps in being engaged in this work. We read in Luke that when Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them to take nothing for their journey. As one who tends to over-pack for every trip I go on, I can imagine this may have been a difficult proposition for some of the disciples. But what we will see this Sunday is that when we travel light, we are much more effective in our ministries. And we are never traveling empty handed because we carry with us the light of Christ.

There is nothing more irritating to me than when I get a phone call at night from a person trying to get me to answer a political poll or let me know my warranty is going to expire on my vehicle. It seems like these calls always come when I am trying to get my son to sleep. Whenever, “unknown caller” pops up on my caller ID, I simply refuse to answer it. This Sunday we will be looking at receiving a call from God, a call to engage in some form of ministry. Often times, just like those calls I receive at night, we don’t want to answer the call. We come up with reasons not to follow that call – our age, our fears, our doubts, our life circumstances. This reluctance to accept God’s call is not new. We see it throughout Scripture. But there is one thing we will see that gave people like Moses, Gideon, and Jeremiah the strength to answer their calls, and should give us that strength as well. This Sunday is also our fourth Sunday worship service, a new worship service designed to renew our understanding of and participation in worship. Please join us as we seek to answer God’s call together.

This Sunday Rev. Herb Knudsen will be at our church because I will be attending the New Day conference. Since I do not have a sermon to post about, I wanted to remind everyone that the following week is our new fourth Sunday worship service. During this service, we have a different order of worship, different style of music, and new elements to our service which invite the congregation to engage in the worship service in a more personal way. If you have never been to our church or have been away for a while, I encourage you to experience our church in a new way through this worship service. In addition, the next meeting of our community discussion group at the Carlock Public Library is on July 21 at 7 p.m. At our first meeting we had twenty participants. This group is intended to provide a safe environment to ask questions and dialogue on issues of faith that we may otherwise be afraid to ask. All are welcome as we seek to embrace the diversity of views and address the diversity of concerns present within our community.

The people that tend to be emulated in today’s society are those with power, those that are financially successful, those that are physically attractive. These people become our heroes and their behaviors are the ones we try to follow. But the kingdom of God recognizes a different kind of hero. This Sunday we will be looking at the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this teaching of Jesus, we see that we do not need to be the social or religious elite to be powerful instruments of God’s love. In fact, the experiences of those who have been rejected and wounded often make them the most powerful channels of God’s grace.
Our discussion group on the book Banned Questions About the Bible also begins this Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Carlock Public Library meeting room. Even if you have never read the Bible or attended church, I think you will find this a welcoming and accepting group to explore issues of faith.