Thoughts on Call, Vocation and Ministry

We Presbyterians talk a lot about “call.” In the most immediate sense, call is the call of Jesus to follow him, to be his disciple. As we respond to that call, we will find that the Spirit activates gifts in us such as those listed in Romans chapter 12. John Wimber (founding pastor of Vineyard Christian Fellowship) preferred [...]

Summaries of 219th General Assembly

The office of the General Assembly has provided us with a letter to the church summarizing the actions of last week’s assembly as well as documents providing more detail and answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on four particular areas of action:  the report on civil union and marriage; the new Form of Government (FOG), [...]

Thursday at GA: The Plenary Sessions

We’re into the plenary sessions now (where all of the commissioners meet to review and vote on the recommendations from the committees).  Thursday’s meeting went beyond 10 pm, having started at 9:30 am… a very long day for all of us.   The intensity is broken by frequent times of prayer, singing and sharing with one [...]

GA Wednesday

Well, folks, I can tell you that Cherokee Presbytery can be very proud of its commissioners.  As I visited the committees in session over the last two days, Velma, David, Ken, Andrew and Mickey were all hard at work… AND they each contributed to the work of their committees by offering ideas, refinements, insights and [...]

Tuesday at General Assembly

Today, the committees are in full swing.  They met all day, completing the preliminary readings and statements by overture advocates and listening to others who wished to speak to the various overtures.  The committee that is considering Marriage and Civil Unions had so many people wishing to speak, that they had to resort to a [...]

General Assembly Opening Worship

Worship is one of the best things about attending a meeting of the General Assembly, and today’s opening service of worship was no exception.  For me, the worship brought to mind the restoration of all creation that is our hope… a new heaven and a new earth.  The worship moved from the dawn of creation, [...]

Praying toward General Assembly

In less than a week, we will gather in Minneapolis to convene the 219th meeting of the General Assembly. As I’ve been thinking and praying about this, Jesus’ parable of the wheat and tares came to mind (see Matthew chapter 13). In this parable, the master’s servants observe that tares (weeds) have invaded the crop of good [...]

Gleanings from Cherokee Presbytery

As I travel about the Presbytery, I get to hear about all of the wonderful things that God is doing among us and through us. It just feels wrong to keep all of this good news to myself, so in the true spirit of evangelism (sharing good news), here are some tidbits that I have gleaned [...]

Toward Pentecost

  Perhaps it is the Biblical imagery of breath and fire for the Holy Spirit combined with the artistic influence of Dale Chilhuly (glass artist from Seattle), but whatever the reason, I have come to think of the Holy Spirit’s ministry as that of a glass blower.  A glassblower takes lumps of glass that are [...]

Opting Out … Opting In

Well, it’s happened again. Facebook (“FB”), which I love, has added another element that automatically shares your information with certain websites.  In order to avoid having this happen, you have to go into your FB profile and manually change your privacy settings to “opt out” of this feature.  It amazes me that FB can get away [...]

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