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If You Taught Church History…
This next semester I get the shot at teaching a subject I have been desiring to teach for quite some time: CHURCH HISTORY. I get to teach one section covering the early church to the Reformation, then another section covering the Reformation to today. I want to cover key figures in both sections. Church History I — Augustine, the Desert…
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Prayer Retreat
For those in my church, or those in the Cities and interested, we are doing something different with our prayer retreat this year. It will be February 12-13 at the Benedictine Center in St. Paul. The focus will be on silence and meditation. Rooms are for individuals and space is limited. The cost will include the room plus meals. If…
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Thankful… Our Oldest Son is Engaged
Our oldest son Joshua proposed to Lisa Bailey last night. Lisa had just arrived in Minneapolis for a Christmas visit. Joshua was waiting for her at our home (which we vacated as soon as we dropped off Lisa). He had some wonderful notes for her… and a song he had written just for her. As she walked into the house,…
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Time Wasters
I had finished my message for Sunday morning when I ran across this great column by Mark Galli. I wish I had come across it before writing my message. I could have printed this off and just read it! My text for the day is Luke 2:22-40, the story of Simeon and Anna. Here are two people who simply wasted…
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Christmas Eve and Weather Outside IS Frightful!
We made the trek to my family in Kansas a day early (Tuesday as opposed to Wednesday) because we were leery of the travel conditions in Iowa. Now, on Christmas Eve, we were certainly glad we made the choice because weather is horrible every mile of the journey between our home and Kansas. Our hometown of Minneapolis is getting hammered…
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Taking Our Stand
This past Sunday was my attempt at preaching from the Apocrypha. I used I Maccabees as my text, re-telling the story of the Maccabean Revolt and introducing the story of Hanukkah. In the story was the lesson of Mattathias. I have become fascinated by his incredible faith and boldness. When his village was confronted with sacrificing a desecrated offering or…
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Are We a Burden?
Announcing my weak attempt to preach from the Apocrypha elicited some wonderful responses. One text sent was a prophetic/Messianic text from the Wisdom of Solomon. It understand it can be taken as Messianic, but the passage (Wisdom 2:12-20) begins with, “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man…” It is a passage speaking of the wicked who are tired…
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To the Apocrypha We Go…
To my knowledge, I have never preached from the Apocrypha in my ministry. (I have a bad memory, so somewhere in my distant past I may have attempted this before.) I don’t do this with any anxiety, but with a sense of excitement. We too often miss things because we don’t understand why the Apocrypha exists. It is used so…
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Paying attention to the world
At one point in time I remember reading that living prophetically as a Christian is having a Bible in one hand and newspaper in the other. Well, both are readily available online, so maybe our hands are freed up to raise them to God in intercession. But we MUST pay attention to our world. There are things happening where we…
