Surprise Irony

This Sunday I get to enjoy a beautiful bit of divine irony. Three summers ago I took a class on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) from Dr. Kevin Wilson as part of my Doctor of Ministry coursework. It was an amazing class that helped me make better sense of some challenging sections of Scripture, namely, Leviticus and parts of Numbers. Kevin is a gifted teacher and as knowledgeable about the Old Testament as they come. One of my final pieces of coursework was to write a 10-page sermon on

The Main Thing

Things are picking up around here.  Sunday School is in full swing.  Good Book Club is going strong, with our first Thursday lecture happening last night.  The Food Pantry continues to grow.  The Indian Rock Society is off the ground, and our stewardship campaign will pick up in a few weeks.  Our feasibility study for a capital campaign starts in earnest with a Town Hall on October 30, and that could take us in all sorts of exciting directions.

And then this Sunday is our Ministry Fair.  It's the day

False Gods

This Sunday we'll hear the story from Exodus of the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses has gone up the mountain to meet with God, but when he's away for forty days and nights, the people get restless. So they ask Aaron, Moses' brother, to make gods for them out of their gold. He melts it all down and turns it into a large golden bull, and they fall down and worship it: a god of their own choosing and fashioning and control.

All these years later, we're still worshiping false gods that we believe

"Just Let Me Get Through..."

We have a lot going on at St. Peter's right now. We just launched Good Book Club and resumed Sunday School for all ages. A related Thursday evening lecture series begins next week. We inaugurated the Indian Rock Society last Sunday. The annual fall pledge campaign is coming in a few weeks. And we're going to officially begin a feasibility study in October on the subject of a possible capital campaign in 2012.

That's just at St. Peter's. In addition, I'm helping with the bishop search and

Good Book Club

On Sunday we're kicking off Good Book Club, and I couldn't be more excited. GBC is our all ages, year-long effort to read the Bible together as a community. Using an adaptation of the Bible called The Story, everyone is invited to share the joys and challenges of diving into God's holy Word. It's supplemented by Sunday School for kids, where our children will become familiar with the characters, themes and stories of Scripture. Youth in middle and high school will similarly engage the Bible. And adults are

Miqra!

Last night as I went to bed, one of the last thoughts I had before I drifted off to sleep was of the person who even then was sitting in our church, reading from the Bible (probably something in Deuteronomy is my guess). In the quiet serenity of our church, all night long, selfless, generous servants arrived and read from Scripture. Through the wee hours of night, they filled the air with a constant stream of God's holy words.

I slept very peacefully in that knowledge.

And then this morning when I entered the

Schizophrenic Day

This Sunday is going to be a little schizophrenic. I can admit that ahead of time, and should, because you'll no doubt pick up on it when you're here.

It goes without saying that Sunday is the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It's amazing to think that we're ten years on from that event. It feels simultaneously like yesterday and a lifetime ago. Much has been written and said by politicians, commentators and religious leaders, reflecting on this most solemn of anniversaries, and even I tried my hand at a

Chewing on Scripture

I recently read a study showing that the average Christian family owns nine Bibles. If you stacked all the Bibles sitting in American homes, the tower would rise 29 million feet, nearly 1,000 times the height of Mount Everest. And if you don’t own one, you can take one from just about any hotel or motel room in the country — there are 1.5 billion Gideon Bibles around the world. So very many Bibles, and yet the modern church is remarkably illiterate about Scripture. The Bible is usually an impressive dust

9/11 Anniversary

In these days leading up to the tenth anniversary of the September 11 tragedy, I’ve revisited a book by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called Writing in the Dust. Dr. Williams was actually in New York that fateful morning, preparing to participate in a panel on spiritual direction at Trinity Church, Wall Street, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. Because of its proximity to the towers, Trinity became an important rallying point for emergency responders, and in the weeks and months