Church Blog

Church Blog

MARCH 13, 2024

Dear Friends, It’s not often that a network sit-com includes the classical teleological argument for the existence of God.  But that’s what happened back on October 4, 2018.  The CBS television network aired an episode of Young Sheldon titled A Crisis of Faith and Octopus Aliens.  This particular episode found young Sheldon’s mother Mary wrestling with faith and doubt after a friend’s child dies.  Sheldon sees his mom is troubled. He’s concerned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxIY0iHaVXU Those of you who have been following along with…

MARCH 6, 2024

Dear Friends, First things first this week.  You’re about to lose an hour.  Sorry about that. Now, on to weightier matters. I’ve been thinking this week, ever since Cole’s message on Sunday, about Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler. As Cole said, this young, powerful, wealthy man saw himself as self-sufficient.  Whatever he needed in life, he was able to provide for himself.  But even rich young rulers have to deal with the big existential questions in life:  Where did I come from?  Why am…

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Dear Friends, It’s not unusual to see a video clip from Joe Rogan circulating on social media.  Joe Rogan is, after all, the most listened to podcaster in the world.  He has nearly 15 million subscribers.  His most recent multi-year podcasting deal will earn him a reported $250 million dollars.  When Elon Musk first appeared as a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the episode was seen by 69 million viewers.  When Joe Rogan speaks, lots of people listen. Two years ago,…

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Dear Friends, Do you love to hate? That question grabbed my attention as I read an article this week by Alan Jacobs.  He is an author and a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University.  The title of the article I read is Hatred Alone Is Immoral:  Why We Whould Be Concerned, Above All, With The Education Of The Passions.  In it, he explores the pleasure we find in indulging our hatred of others.  He quotes Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who,…

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Dear Friends, There are likely two notations today on whatever calendar you use.  Today is Valentine’s Day.  And it is Ash Wednesday. Valentine’s Day is a day set aside to celebrate and express love and affection for a romantic partner.  Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the 40-day journey (with Sundays excluded) that lead us to contemplation of the cross of Christ in preparation for our celebration of His resurrection.  Ash Wednesday has a very different kind of love in view. I’m a…

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Dear Friends, Last night, as we met for dinner for our men’s First Tuesday gathering, I was talking with Curtis Thomas about his upcoming Romans study, which will start a week from Sunday.  If you need more details or you’re interested in being part of the study, contact Curtis and let him know.  His email address is c-b.thomas@sbcglobal.net.     This study is is for believers and unbelievers alike.  It’s something Curtis has done over and over again for decades, taking hundreds of people…

JANUARY 31, 2024

Dear Friends, This weekend is a big weekend for our students.    The D-Now weekend is an opportunity for students to work together, have fun together and grow together spiritually.  I hope you’ll be praying for these young people, Pastor Cole and our Roots volunteers. It’s interesting to me that we know nothing about Jesus when he was a teenager.  The only glimpse we have of Jesus between the time when He was a baby until He began His ministry as a…

JANUARY 24, 2024

Dear Friends, A few years ago, I read online a remarkable testimony from a young woman who experienced an unexpected and dramatic conversion to Christ.  Her name is Keri Smith.  Back in 2017, twenty years after graduating from Duke, she began to question the worldview she had learned at the university and had unquestioningly appropriated as her own.  As she began to see the flaws in her thinking, she began looking for another, more firm foundation for her life.  That eventually…

JANUARY 17, 2024

Dear Friends, I’m sure you know that Jesus summed up all of the Old Testament commands – all the law and the prophets, as He put it – with two directives.  Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as you love yourself. You may have heard someone along the way who has suggested that this verse is telling us that in order to love others well, we have to first love ourselves.  Before we can be of any use…

JANUARY 11, 2024

Dear Friends, We spent New Year’s Eve with our family in Florida.  That morning, Mary Ann and I worshipped at a nearby church.  We felt right at home, singing familiar hymns, digging deeply into God’s word, praying together for ourselves and for our world.  We were glad we were able to join with our extended spiritual family in worship. When we have to be away from Redeemer on a Sunday, we like visiting local churches.  On our sabbatical this past summer, we…

JANUARY 3, 2024

Dear Friends, I wonder if you think about your life the way the Apostle Paul thought about his. I was struck this week by a passage in Acts 20 where the Apostle is saying goodbye to his beloved friends and fellow church leaders in Ephesus.  Paul had been in the city for more between 2-3 years.  He had seen the church he planted take root and blossom.  Now he sensed God’s call to go to Jerusalem and to be there in time…

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Dear Friends, This is the last e-newsletter you’ll get from me in 2023.  Next week, like many of you, I’ll be enjoying some family time. Of course this weekend, our focus will be on the birth of Jesus as we gather for worship Sunday morning and Sunday evening.  But with 2024 now just 11 days away, I want to take this opportunity to turn your attention to the new year and any resolutions you might be considering. For a decade now, I’ve had the…

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Dear Friends, Just a few months ago, on a warm July evening, Mary Ann and I stood looking out from the rim of Bryce Canyon in Utah, taking in the vista, seeing the amazing rock formations known as hoodoos.    It was mid afternoon on a Tuesday when we arrived in Bryce City.  We checked into our hotel room, unpacked our car and headed into the National Park to get our first look at the amazing geological spires the fill the canyon…

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

Dear Friends, Do you minimize your sins?  John Piper says we all do.  He notes that all sin is rooted in some kind of lie.   My sin is not that bad. There are much worse things than what I’m doing.       Everyone does this. I can’t help it. God will overlook my sin.  He knows I’m frail.  I’m not sure there really is a God anyway.      Think of the vocabulary you use to describe your sin.  We use words like an accident,…

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Dear Friends, When you think about gratefulness or giving thanks, what Bible verses come to mind?  With Thanksgiving coming up next week, that’s a good question to ponder.  Before you read any further, take a time out here and answer that question out loud.  What verses or passages come to mind? I asked some friends that question years ago, and I imagine their answers and yours are not far apart. Most of them went straight to the Psalms, where over and over again we are…

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Dear Friends, It may be one of the best known and most beloved poems of the 20th century.  Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken was cited by President John F. Kennedy when he spoke at Amherst College in 1963, just months before his assassination.  Writer Bernardo Aparicio García notes that “Ours is not a poetry-reading culture, but then again, it’s not like we’re total illiterates. There are still a few poems out there that just about everyone seems to have read, and…

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Dear Friends, My wife and I have found ourselves pretty regularly reminding ourselves in recent years that most of the problems we face are first world problems. You know the kinds of things I’m talking about, right? The package from Amazon doesn’t arrive on time, as promised. The movie you’re trying to stream keeps buffering. The service at the restaurant was so slow! You had to go to a second grocery store to get your extra crunchy peanut butter because the first store was out. Think about…

OCTOBER 18, 2023

Dear Friends, This week, I’m passing along something I read online.  It’s a Facebook post written by Greg Stier, the founder of Dare2Share, an evangelistic outreach aimed primarily at teens and young adults. Greg posted about parenting, and I thought “I can relate.”   I think his counsel is wise.  Here’s what he wrote: Early on in our marriage my wife and I took one of those raising children courses that promised certain outcomes if certain principles were consistently followed.  We did our best to…

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Dear Friends, Our God is a holy God.   Holier than you have ever imagined. The God of scripture is defined by His holiness.  His love is a holy love.  His mercy is a holy mercy.  His justice is a holy justice.  His righteousness is a holy righteousness.  Where He stands is holy ground.  He dwells on His holy mountain and is worshipped in His holy temple.  His name is holy.  His law is holy, and those who are his followers are a…

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Dear Friends, When he was elected President in 1960, John F. Kennedy was 43 years old.  He had two toddlers at the time, and the media loved showing the Leader of the Free World in the Oval Office with his children scampering about.  He may have had a Secret Service detail protecting him and a secretary scheduling his every appointment, but his children had priority access to their father.     I’m sure there were times when the children were told…