Paul Janssen has written a beautiful new hymn, “This New Command I Give to You.” I love how it has Jesus’ directive answered by our prayer of praise and supplication.
You may download it (as an Acrobat file) by clicking here.
Thank you, Paul!
After 40 years as a pastor in New York, I retired and moved to the wild west of Arizona. Read more…
I think it’s every day now that I read or listen to some report or comment on the high cost of gasoline: what drives it, how we got to this point, how individuals and corporations and governments are struggling with it. A question I’ve not heard addressed is how gasoline above $4.20 a gallon will impact congregations.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.
Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent.
The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Can anyone think of examples in church organizations? I can.
The good news is that on Epiphany we celebrate a King who defeats the power of all the Iron Laws out there, “so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 3:10)
Okay, so I’m a day late. But I was pondering yesterday what I should say in a New Year’s post. And my thoughts predictably circled around the notion of resolutions, of which far too much is written and said this time of year. Read more…
I love to pray the Thanksgiving of the Reformed Church: Read more…
Sure, this holiday has become, for many, as secular as most of them. But we are not bound by such secularity. We can celebrate Thanksgiving by giving thanks, not to goodness in general, but to God, the Giver of all Good Gifts. Read more…
I wrote the following in response to a friend who, feeling disheartened at a recent Regional Synod meeting, wrote a poem expressing his frustration with rules of order, parliamentary procedure, polity, governance, and the like. My response (”embodied” in imabic tetrameter) is an attempt to defend these things, or at least to suggest some theological importance for them.
Enjoy. Read more…