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A mid-week message from the Pastor:
Thomas à Kempis wrote this prayer: “Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know, to love what I ought to love, to praise what delights thee most, to value what is precious in thy sight, to hate what is offensive to thee…” May his prayer be our prayer.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
Mother Teresa wrote these words: “The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action. And that action is our wholehearted and free service- the gift of the poorest of the poor- to Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. If we pray the work…
If we do it to Jesus
If we do it for Jesus
If we do it with Jesus…
That’s what makes us content.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
Henri Nouwen wrote this: “Trees look strong compared with the wild reeds in the field. But when the storm comes the trees are uprooted, whereas the wild reeds, while moved back and forth by the wind, remain rooted and stand up again after the storm has calmed down. Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may be easily broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of time while remaining solidly anchored to the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause them to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let’s be flexible while being deeply rooted.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
One denomination’s position paper offers this: “Hope in God and in the triumph of God’s purpose is the central thrust of biblical eschatology. Concern with the ending of history (the time, the manner) is minimal in scripture; concern with the End of history is a dominant theme. The End is God’s goal for the entire enterprise, Jesus’ term for the End was God’s reign, the kingdom of heaven. To him that reign was at hand, as near as the readiness of women and men to receive it.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
Richard M. Gula writes this: “When we begin to confine God to specifically religious areas of life, we are forced to turn away from the ordinary experiences of life in order to be touched by the gracious reality of God. Yet this is not the way it was for Jesus. The fundamental message of Jesus about God is that human life is the home of God. Do not look anywhere else. All the parables of Jesus are stories about experiencing God. These stories are filled with very human characters and very human experiences. Yet none of them ever mention ‘God’ directly….For this reason, our relationship to God and our response to God cannot be relegated to special activities or special moments. Our relationship and response to God are going on all the time, whether we want them to or not.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
James C. Fenhagen wrote this: “The biblical use of the word ‘righteousness’ is the moral equivalent of what we mean when we speak of holiness. It incorporates such concerns as a passion for justice and a concern for truth along with the need to live an ethically responsible life. It involves reflecting in what we do the Christian moral vision by which we understand who we are. Righteousness is the human expression of holiness embodying a vision rooted in moral perspective.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
Here is an excerpt from a position paper from the Disciple of Christ: “As members of churches we are also members of other groups and institutions- political parties, economic organizations, regional and national associations. Each of these constituencies has its vested interests, its value systems, and its authority figures. We cannot deny our participation in these groups; in fact, it is of the utmost importance that these memberships be acknowledged, lest we become unconsciously possessed by them. But the challenge before us as followers of Jesus Christ is to make conscious decisions as Christians, honoring our commitment to him above the claims and assumptions of every other authority.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
In his book The Quest for the Historical Jesus Albert Schweitzer wrote this: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake side. He came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
One spiritual writer offers this: “Consolation is a beautiful word. It means “ to be with the lonely one.” To offer consolation is one of the most important ways to care. Life is so full of pain, sadness, and loneliness that we often wonder what we can do to alleviate the immense suffering we see. We can and must offer consolation. We can and must console the mother who lost her child, the young person with AIDS, the family whose house burned down, the soldier who was wounded, the teenager who contemplates suicide, the old man who wonders why he should stay alive. To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, ‘You are not alone. I am with you. Together we can carry the burden. Don’t be afraid. I am here.’ That is consolation. We all need to give it as well as to receive it.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message:
Dear Friends,
Over the last few months the issues of racism and racial justice have become daily headlines in ways we haven’t seen for quite some time. The church has a mandate to be ministers of reconciliation. How do we speak with one another and how do we address society in times like these? That will be the subject of the sermon this Sunday, September 13. I hope you will join us for either in-person worship or on Facebook-Live. We continue to have issues with streaming the worship service and are still working on them. Thick, concrete walls aren’t very helpful with Wi-Fi signals.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
One spiritual writer offers this: “To forgive another person from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. We say, ‘I no longer hold your offense against you.’ But there is more. We also free ourselves of the burden of being ‘the offended one.’ As long as we do not forgive those who have wounded us, we carry them with us, or worse, pull them as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies and then define ourselves as being offended and wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from the Pastor:
Basil Pennington writes this: “It is contemplation that leads us most powerfully into compassion. It is true that, because of the solidarity of the human race and the more profound oneness of the baptized in Christ, whenever any one of us rises through contemplation to new levels of consciousness the whole human family is raised. Any bit of leaven will leaven the entire mass.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from Pastor:
Emily Landon recently said this: “You know the five stages of grief- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance? I think the American people are in all five of them- but different parts of the country are in different stages.” I think she is right, but I would take it a step further. Every community has individuals who are at a different stage in the process. Not all of us are in the same place whether it be on the topic of COVID-19 or something else. Let’s be sure to show patience and grace to those different from us.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message from Pastor:
Henri Nouwen writes this: “When you pray, you profess that you are not God and that you wouldn’t want to be, that you haven’t reached your goal yet, and that you never will reach it in this life, that you must constantly stretch out your hands and wait again for the gift which gives new life. This attitude is difficult because it makes you vulnerable.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
Pastor John was on vacation the weeks of July 15 and 22 so our Administrative Assistant sent out Wednesday messages. He is back now and ready to share!
A mid-week message from Pastor:
In his book Money, Sex and Power, Richard J. Foster writes this: “There is a power that destroys There is also a power that creates. The power that creates gives life and joy and peace. It is freedom and not bondage, life and not death, transformation and not coercion. The power that creates restores relationship and gives the gift of wholeness to all. The power that creates is spiritual power, the power that proceeds from God.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message:
Henri Nouwen wrote this: “Sometimes we have to ‘step over’ our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become ‘the offended one,’ ‘the forgotten one,’ or ‘the discarded one.’ Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A message from our Pastor:
Dear Friends,
This week the governor has changed the guidelines for Kansas and is now requiring masks for all public gatherings. The Session voted to follow these guidelines so we are now requiring masks at our worship services beginning this Sunday, July 5. You may either bring your own mask or one will be provided to you at the doors entering the sanctuary. The Session also voted to cancel the worship service and cookout at the park scheduled for July 12. Instead, we will have our regular worship service in the sanctuary on that day with no meal to follow. COVID-19 cases have increased in our county over the last few weeks. We want to do our part to keep everyone safe so that things don’t get any worse. Thanks for your participation in this new guideline.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message:
Dag Hammarskjold, in his classic spiritual autobiography Markings, writes this: “Goodness is something so simple: always to live for others, never to seek one’s own advantage.” Simple? Yes. Easy? No.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A mid-week message:
Christopher Bryant writes this: “I believe that, as a general rule, the weight of my prayer when I turn to God to acknowledge my failure should rest neither on self-blame nor on petition for forgiveness but on my overarching need for divine help, for wisdom to see and strength to do what is right. An old but familiar prayer
perfectly expresses this need: ‘O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.’”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
A weekly message from Our Pastor:
Thomas Merton once wrote this: “One of the most important features of the liturgical renewal is insistence on listening to the Word of God…and then participating in a corporate reply. For this listening to be effective, a certain interior silence is required. This in turn implies the ability to let go of one’s congested, habitual thoughts and preoccupations so that one can freely open the heart to the message of the sacred text.”
Have a blessed week,
Pastor John
P.S. Wasn’t it great to be back in worship together this past Sunday?
