PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “How To Get a Solid Grace-Framed Agenda for the New Year”. I want to begin this perspective with some advice, as I often do, from one of my favorite authors-Frederick Buechner. He writes, ” it is mainly for some clue to where I am going that I search through where I have been,…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “A MOST MISCHEVIOUS SUPERSTION”-“ROOTED IN HISTORY!” As we celebrate Christmas again this year there is a troubling trend that I think never quite gets addressed by Christians. Christmas celebration each year is a mixture of fact and fiction that somehow neutralizes the impact that Christmas should have for each generation each year. …
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “GROWING WISER THIS CHRISTMAS” Tri Valley Baptist Church has completed twenty-nine years of ministry. Over the years we have had many men of God lead us in the ministry of winning our community to Christ. I believe it has been the measure of every Pastor to lead this congregation in MAKING DISCIPLES…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The unedited Christmas and the Perfect Tree” It’s the king of all classic TV Christmas specials: “A Charlie Brown Christmas“. It first aired in 1965. We know the familiar scenes of Charlie Brown looking for the real meaning of Christmas; receiving no cards from anyone; Snoopy decorates his doghouse; Lucy has her…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “CHRISTMAS-GOD HOOKING AN EXTRA ON THE FRONT OF ORDINARY” Thanksgiving is now past. The major post-Thanksgiving sales are on. Black Friday-Small Business Saturday-Cyber Monday. Then all the adds that remind us exactly how many days to Christmas. The Christmas season is suddenly on us! Every year each Pastor is faced with the…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “THANKSLIVING: It’s better than THANKSGIVING!” I am not sure when, where, or who first used the term “thanksliving”. Peter Gomes, renowned preacher of Harvard University in the 20th Century, (though not one I am particularly able to embrace the theology he embraced), wrote that he had a friend who kept an old Sunday…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Laser-Light Gospel Evangelism”. I was led to Christ by Pastor Russell Pittman, of the Salem Baptist Church of Decatur, Illinois in early September 1968. The next year, after growing in Christ, I felt God calling me to give up plans to go to the University of Illinois and be a Physical Education…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “THANKSGIVING-The inner health made audible…praise in it’s complete enjoyment…it’s appointed consummation”. Ian McPherson, Scottish novelist (1905-1944), tells about traveling across England by train one hot summer day. As the train rolled to a stop in a little village, through the open windows of his train car, McPherson could hear someone outside shouting,…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Catacoombs Conquering the Colieseum”. Things aren’t always as they appear. A recent magazine carried an article on the Coliseum in Rome. It spoke of it as the place where “Christians died for a faith, that is now taken too lightly”. i.e. “taken for granted”. We look back to that famous historic amphitheater…
PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Saved by the faithful effort of the One who Loves Us!” The USS Astoria was a heavy cruiser that saw duty during World War II’s Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, then was sunk in August of 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island. On board in the fight for Savo…