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A little context: from August 2002-July 2003, I was the intern pastor at Hope Christian Reformed Church in Oak Forest, IL. Then, when I started working as the religion teacher at pastor at Providence-St. Mel Schools, Hope remained my home congregation and then was the congregation that ordained me in November of 2003. They invited [...]
Revelation 12 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church December 21, 2008, 8:30am Pray for us, because at the next service, we’re handing the preaching of the word over to the children. They’re doing a Christmas pageant. Christmas pageants are not safe. Let’s be honest: when Mary is 8 and Joseph is 5 and the innkeeper is 3, [...]
Matthew 5:5; Romans 12:1-3; Psalm 37 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church Twice in my life, on a bus in a foreign country, I’ve had a moment where I understood how big Americans really are. In Guatemala, I rode a chicken bus (called chicken buses because people transport everything, including their chickens). Latin America is where [...]
Matthew 14:22-33 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church Everything is about high school… That’s a line from a movie I saw recently…but what movie it was, how it played into the plot line, those things are not important…because there are so many movies and stories and books and urban myths in our culture that tell us that [...]
Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:10-18 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church A few weeks ago, I found myself in line at a discount store looking exactly like the Mom I thought I would never be—the one with too many Christmas presents for her kid. Looking for something entirely different, I had wandered into the children’s section and found [...]
Last night, my latest issue of Brain, Child arrived. There’s a great review by Kristin Kovacic of three books about teenagers (by the way, all of these books have longer titles, but I’m too lazy to type them, so click the links to see the subtitles): The Stardust Lounge, by Deborah Digges What It Takes [...]
Hebrews 11:39-12:3 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church If we at Fox Valley Presbyterian Church needed a new pulpit Bible, we’d take out the catalog of a church supply company and place an order. Within a week, our new Bible would arrive. And that would be that. But in the mid 1990s, the Benedictine monks of St. [...]
Esther 1-2 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church During July, those of us working our way through the Year of the Bible together will find ourselves reading Esther. It’s a great story. Many of us know bits and piece, or maybe the Sunday School version of the story. But, many of us also find that it’s one [...]
John 17:20-26 May 20, 2007 (Confirmation Service) Fox Valley Presbyterian Church A few weeks ago, I decided to venture into the world of Facebook. Facebook is a social networking website. You type in your profile, and look around to find profiles of other people who you already know. I found my siblings, college and seminary [...]
Joel 2:12-13; Joshua 24:14-15 February 21, 2007 (Ash Wednesday) Fox Valley Presbyterian Church My husband Erik and I were raised in hiking families, and when I say hiking, I mean the kind that includes being out of touch with civilization for days at a time. We know what it’s like to loose track of your [...]