The boldness of faith

As is often the case, the MVT Class frequently discusses the meaning of faith and offers examples. Well, we are a Sunday school class and I’ve been lead to believe that Sunday school classes do that sort of thing. Anyway, we have also been celebrating, recently, the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing. Would [...]

More Willimon Wisdom

While reading Will Willimon’s Why I Am A United Methodist, I came across these words that I found a bit provocative (Willimon, at the time, was on the faculty at Duke University; now he’s bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church): A young man came in to see me and said [...]

Society should know beliefs, their meanings

The human mind demands explanations to the ultimate questions of life, and that the simple accumulation of facts doesn’t always guarantee complete and satisfactory answers.

There God goes again

Speaking of that “mysterious ways” thing (well, we probably did at some point), check out this story from CNN.com: Founder of Hookers for Jesus marries Christian rocker in Vegas (CNN) — She was a call girl working the streets of Sin City. He’s a guitarist in a heavy metal band. They found commonality in their [...]

He Comes to Us

Back in early December when this blogging thing was going pretty strong, one of our lesson discussions led us to the choral anthem “He Comes to Us,” arranged by Jane Marshall.  The text of the anthem is the last paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s 1948 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus: “He comes to us [...]

Christmas choral program

Since you’ll probably want to get your tailgate tents out and set up on the church lawn so you can get a sanctuary seat, please be advised that the First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir’s Christmas program is scheduled for Dec. 9. This year’s program — as is usually the case with the Divine Miss [...]

‘Representing’ God

I spent a couple days this week at the Mississippi Baptist Convention, and I thought the Baptists handled it remarkably well. Let’s just say it was … uh, interesting. Not too much unlike our Annual Conference. Well, maybe a little. Anyway, I did hear some pretty good preaching, including one sermon by the president of [...]

Another pithy quote

While flipping through the channels last night, I heard one of those cable TV preachers with the really strange hair make a pretty clever comment about how things generally all work out in God’s own good time: “We take care of our character; God takes care of our calendar.” Just thought I’d pass that along. [...]

Day 37: Spiritual Maturity

We will forgo any discussion as to why Teacher Tom felt compelled to assign the most senior of our class members the lesson about “maturity” — the one that begins with a treatise on old lobsters. We will instead move ahead with our topic for today — spiritual maturity — and perhaps even discuss how [...]

Whoa … hold on there

While I’ve not been a particularly big fan of this book from the very beginning — we’re not studying anything we haven’t studied many times before — I do see the value in a “corporate lesson” wherein all the bromides are thrown out there for some truly heartfelt review. I do wish, however, that professional [...]