08
Dec 2017
When you first decided to get married, what did you envision? Did you think about wonderful moments of togetherness as you encountered various life situations? Raising children? Serving your church or community as a couple? Growing old together? Chances are that you imagined many things that the two of you would do in synchrony, but you never imagined what would happen when the two of you were not working together so smoothly. Almost no one does. And then the inevitable happens. You realize that you and your spouse are not on the......
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08
Dec 2017
Advent begins our liturgical year and is a season of anticipation as we look forward not only to Christ’s birth, but also to his triumphant return in glory. As we look for the light of Christ to break into our community with love, hope and healing, we lean into the hope we have in Christ’s transforming presence. Our sermons this Advent will focus on what happens when we allow our longing for the King of Glory to actively shape our relationship with God. Adult Sunday School In adult Sunday School we......
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08
Dec 2017
Most couples begin their marriage with great enthusiasm for being in love and assume that they will stay in love with the same effortless ease that they first fell in love. The experience of passion and romance is so powerful and profound that it leads to expectations of eternal devotion. The problem for many couples, however, is that several factors lead to an inevitable demise in their sense of being in love with their partner. First, science shows us that during the first two years of a romantic relationship, endogenous opiates (our......
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08
Dec 2017
A couple of weeks ago I had a health scare. I don’t want to bother you with all the intimate details, so suffice it to say that in my line of work, too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. I know the statistics and the fact that it was much more likely to be nothing than something. But I also have seen the worst of the worst and know that “something” was a possibility. At first, I was able to keep a cool head and for the most part ignore that nagging......
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08
Dec 2017
Easter Tuesday 2014 My dear brother rectors, Alleluia! Christ is Risen! What a joy we shared as his priests this Easter Day when we were able to proclaim those words again. I so look forward to hearing about your Holy Week Services when I see most of you over the next month. I am writing to ask each of you personally to do two things for me and for our diocese as the Midwest Annual Gathering (May 16-17) approaches. First, commit this time to your regular and intensive prayers. And, second,......
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08
Dec 2017
Thanks be to God for the amazing work he is doing in our congregation! We are awed by how many of our congregation came and shared whatever word they had heard during Lent, from Denethor and Lord of the Rings to crows flying in tandem to our usual themes of light and darkness. Some common notes sounded during our gathering: We are called to be light in the community of Kenosha and that each of us is called to embody Christ’s light in our own unique way. (Collin C: “You gotta let the......
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08
Dec 2017
Most of us think of the liturgical color red as being the color of feast days. While that is true, the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. It’s more helpful to think of it as associated with the Passion of Jesus–meaning his betrayal, crucifixion and resurrection–and the works of his power, such as his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is because the association of red with Christ’s blood that we use red when remembering the death of Christian martyrs. The early church considered being killed because of......
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08
Dec 2017
This fall our adult Sunday school class is focusing on reclaiming our “first love,” the living, loving relationship we are called to with Jesus. Our class title comes from Revelation 2, where Jesus is speaking to the church in Ephesus: I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But......
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08
Dec 2017
A good vision statement pulls people together, keeps them coordinated, helps them to be faithful stewards of who God has gifted them corporately to be, and how He has especially inspired them to minister in their time and place. Like a good sermon, it is an application of a timeless call, a helpful and encouraging interpretation of the particular way a local gathering is to carry out the universal calls to make disciples, break bread, pray, fellowship with one another, live out the teaching of the Apostles, collaborate in the miraculous power......
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08
Dec 2017
Epiphanies. We have all had them. Some small, some large. Some life changing, perhaps some life threatening. Those sudden moments of enlightenment. When something dark and mysterious suddenly becomes clear. You realize what you were created for. Who you should marry (hopefully she had the same epiphany). How something works. Why the government is so screwed up. What was hidden from you is now made known. An epiphany is a revealing, an unveiling, a shining in upon something. A light where darkness had once been. An epiphany is not an epiphany if......
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