23 Jul, 2020
Here’s my last ASP story. One year our 6-person crew was assigned Miss Judy’s house. As happens in Appalachia when the houses are built into the sides of the mountains, when it rains, the water runs down the slope and under the house and...
23 Jul, 2020
Because our drives down to the Appalachia region always took place over two days, we would stop at a park or somewhere on Sunday morning for a brief worship service. One of our favorite places to worship was on the top of a cliff overlooking a...
23 Jul, 2020
Here’s one of my favorite ASP stories. It was hot. Well, almost hot by Appalachian standards. We had two crews on Claude and Margaret’s house, which had little in the way of actual footers, and a room where the floor had rotted out. Together,...
23 Jul, 2020
Without the pandemic, yesterday would have been our mission trip crew’s first work day on the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) in Kentucky. This would have been my 12th trip helping the people of Appalachia make their homes warmer, safer and...
20 Jul, 2020
Honestly, I am grateful to have been a pastor during this time in history because I believe that this pandemic will have a larger affect than we realize on church, religion, and how we see God. Some of it good, and some of it sort of sad, in my...
19 Jul, 2020
Robert Fulghum, in his book “From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives” writes, “Rituals do not always involve words, occasions, officials, or an audience. Rituals are often silent, solitary, and self-contained. The most powerful rites of...
18 Jul, 2020
Ritual. It’s sort of a stuffy word relegated to the grand, vaulted ceilings of churches. According to Google, a ritual is “ a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. ” But ritual...
17 Jul, 2020
Hugs. I think it’s hugs I miss the most. I know I am luckier than many people as I can still hug Julie and my kids. Okay, I confess, I hugged my dad, too… just once… but I was masked, turned my head and held my breath. It didn’t seem the same...
16 Jul, 2020
So, yesterday morning when I was posting my reflection on “How do you experience God?” I was looking for appropriate images for our Facebook page and website. But, when I googled “experiencing God” all I got were images of someone’s book with...
15 Jul, 2020
Here’s my question of the day: How do you experience God? Note that this is a completely different question than who is God to you? The second question is easily answered by regurgitating all the things we’ve ever been told about who or what...