Tuesday Notes

Dear Church Family, On Sunday we celebrated Palm Sunday when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. If you missed it you can listen to the sermon here. The crowd laid down palms and the cloaks off their back for Jesus as he rode a donkey. Before entering the city, Jesus tells his…

Church Family, “What happens when you pray about that?” This question was once asked to me by a trusted friend who had just listened to me share about a situation in my life that was occupying my attention and causing me a good bit of distress. “What happens when you…

Church Family, Sometimes I find that Jesus says things that don’t make sense to me. Maybe they are going to pull my “pastor card” for writing that, but it’s true.  Perhaps I could phrase it a bit differently.  Maybe it would be more agreeable to say that “Sometimes I find…

Church Family, You may not have recognized it, but this past Sunday was the only date in the calendar that is also an imperative: “March Forth!”  With the exception of a pesky letter “u” the calendar lined up perfectly with the essence of our big idea for Sunday morning as…

Church Family, How rooted are you feeling today? I mean “rooted” in a good way; rooted in the sense of being firmly established, resistant to the winds of life, and able to draw nourishment from the soils in which you currently stand. We spent a lot of time in the…

Church Family, Back in my youth ministry days, we used to use the phrase “Mandatory Opportunity” with our students to talk about some specific events.  It wasn’t employed as a coercive term, just as a gentle reminder that there were some things that were so important that our participation in…

Church Family, Today is “Fat Tuesday.”  Hurricane drinks, plastic beads, Polish pastries, blah, blah, blah. Let’s get to the good stuff.  Tomorrow begins a experiment we are calling “Let Us Pray: A Congregational ExperiLent.”  During the season of Lent, which is the 6-week period that precedes Easter Sunday, I’d like…

Church Family, The world needs you. Jesus says so. On Sunday morning we continued in our winter sermon series All In: Life Will Never Be the Same as we looked at what it means for us to truly invite Jesus into our congregation. (You can listen to the message here)….

Dear First Press Family, For those who were in worship on Sunday, you were given an unanticipated gift. If you missed it, you can enjoy a solid taste of that gift by listening here. We were in the final week of our series: ALL IN, where we have each been…