Weekly Reflection

How do you feel about celebrating Halloween? Have you ever wondered what, if any, bearing the celebration of Halloween has on our Christian faith? The discussion topic for Table Talk at the Pub this week was Halloween: do the origins of Halloween have any impact on its celebration to...

Pastor's State of the Church Report for 2017 As lead pastor of St. John's, it is my great joy and privilege to report that we are continuing steady progress toward our missional mandate of being people with "open arms and serving hands, transforming lives for Christ." We ar...

Waiting is a hard thing to do. I am writing this on Tuesday and the situation may very well have changed by the time you are reading this - and I hope and pray it has! Many of you are aware that last Monday, my Mom suffered a massive stroke. Although she is a "...

We are all saddened and appalled at the tragedy that occurred in Las Vegas this week. I want to share some words of wisdom from our bishop, Peggy Johnson. And I hope we will all continue to pray and to hope. I also pray that this tragedy will be the impetus for us, as a nation, to work re...

The first annual (we hope!) R.I.S.E. Sunday is happening in just a few more days, and what a great day it will be! I just know that we are going to make a tremendous difference in the lives of many - through the Rise Against Hunger event, the making of sleeping bags for local...

It's been a good week of vacation. The weather has been just about perfect - sunny every day, not too hot, not too cool. Loved the pool & lazy river. Saw some fun shows - Cirque du Soleil was great as usual, but the best show of all this year was a surprise - I discovered I really...

I have a preference when it comes to airlines, and some of you might be able to guess which one it is. I am on vacation this week, you see. In fact, I am writing this little memoir to help me pass the time on my flight. According to my calculations, this is my 11th annual trip to my fr...

I started monitoring the path of Hurricane Irma early last week. My daughter & son-in-law, you see, had booked a 5-night cruise out of Fort Lauderdale on Labor Day, and one day last week she called and said, "MOM!! I just KNEW it! There's a hurricane brewing in the Atla...

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who so generously volunteered their time for what we had hoped and prayed would be a wonderful event this past Thursday evening. Unfortunately, due to technical issues that were unable to be resolved after many hours of trying, Kathy Troc...

Yes, I procrastinated. In fact, even worse than that, I had no particular interest in finding out the details of the upcoming solar eclipse - sure, I'd been hearing about it for weeks, but I truly didn't pay it much mind - not even when someone asked why on earth I was planning to fly ho...