Category: worship & messages

This is a guest post. A friend of mine spoke words recently which deserve careful attention by others. For various reasons, she is not able to be public online, so I offered to post her words anonymously. Her story and her thoughtfulness show us a view …

Our stories, our experiences. This is all we really have to share, all we really have to build connections and community with each other. To tell our stories, to share our experiences requires us to reflect, to ponder, to get enough distance from the circling …

(Message given December 9, 2018 at Newberg Emerging Friends Church) The mystery of Christmas. It’s something we hear a lot about at this time of year, held out there for us as part of the magic we might be missing in the bustle. Embrace the …

The moral of the story is, despite all your yelling over the years, I’m actually decent at seating. The 9, 10, and 11 seeds got the upsets (and the 12 seed almost did), but other than that it held to form. Here are your new …

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a special introduction to this year’s Advent Caroling Madness! Thank you, Jon Curtis Gemeroy! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwM6u3TMWm4] Advent is beginning, and the season of Advent was created to help us tap into the longing we have for things to be made …

We are getting close to the Christmas season, and as I already warned my family, I am ALL IN this year. So we are doing things a little differently this year, opening song nomination for all the songs NOW. The original brainstorm was 5 years …

It isn’t remarkable to look at, this path I walk atop the stacked stones of Hadrian’s Wall–but it is an ancient border, an historic boundary, a demarcation of Empire. For 1900 years these stones have weathered the ebb and flow of human history. Telling the …

(Content warning: description of disclosure of sexual abuse.) Her words hung there, between us, naked and vulnerable, the long years of secrecy and darkness seeming to still cling to them, weighing them down. I use hung there as a flawed metaphor; something that is so …

(Message given at Newberg Emerging Friends Church on July 15, 2018) Tonight I stand with millions of Jesus-followers throughout the centuries, joining with them to remind us that the Creator of the Universe wants to be known, and is a living, pursuing, healing, and justice-seeking …

I still grieve over the pain so many feel after years of church turmoil. Uprooted, displaced, hopes raised and then dashed, confused, unsure, frustrated, angry, lost, lonely, questioning, doubting, sad, disillusioned, powerless, let down…and grieving.  I’ve wrestled with whether or not to write this. I …