Our 25th Anniversary

-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mustard Seed Farming & a Country Made Whole

-
Image
Before I begin, I should let you know that in keeping with the theme of this service, I wrote this reflection in pencil on paper first. Wendell Berry is famous for eschewing computers for the primitive pencil and paper. Unlike Berry, however, I did not ask my wife Holly to type and print it out. There are some places to which I am not willing to follow even Wendell Berry. Also in keeping with the Wendell Berry theme, who is a Baptist, I will be using the traditional Baptist three-point sermon format that I heard growing up. Dylan had a guitar, three chords, and the truth. I have scripture, three points, and the truth. Now, I will say no need to fear hellfire and brimstone. This is a pretty interfaith and farmer-friendly sermon J Anyway, here we go. This morning’s scripture comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, vs. 31-32. I use the Douay-Rheims Translation: "Another parable he proposed unto them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, w
Read more

"Wholy Holy" (Marvin Gaye)

-
Image
Columbia Memorial Hospital faced the Catskills in the distance and stood just a half mile from the first living room I remember. The apartment possessed only two bedrooms, already too small for my father, mother, two older sisters, and newborn me. In a couple years, when my dad got a better job, we’d move. If child-bearing wasn’t what it was (and remains), I imagine my mom might have walked me home that week. But childbirth, rightly called labor, exhausts thoroughly. And with three kids all under five years of age and with a husband often working, parenthood never stopped exhausting my mother. April 10 th  of 1971 brought unseasonably wintry weather, a pointed, probing wind across the river and our city of the same name. And the alley off of Worth Avenue in downtown Hudson, New York included a steep hill up. My mom didn’t walk me home.   1971, historically speaking, isn’t notorious or notable for things like military or terrorist attacks, political assassinations, or the ending of wa
Read more

Temptations of the Church in the Wilderness

-
  The American church is in the throes of a wilderness experience. For Jesus, it was 40 days and 40 nights. For us, it is going on 30 years. Authors Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge describe what this wilderness experience amounts to in their 2023 book The Great Dechurching . They write: The U.S. is currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country, as tens of millions of formerly regular Christian worshipers nationwide have decided they no longer desire to attend church at all. These are what we now call the dechurched. About 40 million adults in America today used to go to church but no longer do, which accounts for around 16 percent of our adult population. For the first time in the eight decades that Gallup has tracked American religious membership, more adults in the United States do not attend church than attend church. More people have left the church in the last twenty-five years than all the new people who became Christ
Read more