I can’t tell you how honored I am to serve God and this congregation as Senior Pastor. I think we have a bright future ahead of us! I want to start our new beginning with a sermon series I’ve titled “Key Pieces of Faith.”
The retirement celebration last Friday evening was perfect. Susan and I and our family are deeply grateful. Several people asked me if I felt the love. I certainly did!
This season of Lent we will be reflecting deeply together on the values that make us who we are as a faith community, including: Evangelism, Discipleship, Community, Compassion, Worship, and Commitment.
We are continuing our Sanctuary worship series with a focus on the symbols of the Holy Spirit that we find in our beautiful worship space.
This Sunday our theme is “Veneration” and our scripture is from Matthew 25, the Parable of the Last Judgment. Perhaps of all the teachings of Jesus, this parable is the clearest about how we are to live and treat one another and at the same time one of the most challenging. It shows us how to venerate Jesus through the way that we live and serve.
Each apostle was a unique person with his own gifts and his own liabilities. We can learn a lot from them and be inspired by them in the way we live out our own faith.
This week we’re beginning a new worship series entitled Sanctuary. Sanctuary — the word brings to mind a place of refuge or safety. We even use the word for nature reserves, which are safe places for animals.
This Sunday we’ll wrap up our Darkest Before Dawn worship series with a miracle that is perhaps the greatest of miracles — that of a restored life — made whole by amazing grace.
The story of Paul gaining a new vision for his life is relevant for our lives today.