I am about to leave for Montreat Music and Worship Conference.  When we return I will repack and leave for vacation.  So I won't be blogging (unless I can get on from Turkey) until August 4th.

When I resume I plan to go in a new directionsince sermon planning in a blog didn't really work.

 I have just finished reading a book called Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore

I laughed out loud through a good part of the book and some parts actually made me think.

So beginning in August I am going to lead a book study by BLOG on this book. I am telling you now so you have time to read it if you wish to participate. I have never done this before so I am not exactly sure how it will work but it should be fun. I am not issuing a general invitation to the whole congregation because many people would find this book offensive. Some would ...

I really love this story of Abraham and Sara in Genesis 18:1-15. There are so many rich themes in it- trust, obedience, hospitality, faith, laughter…

The hospitality theme hooks the Benedictine experience I have had through Women Touched by Grace (WTBG). If you want to know how it feels to be welcomed as a stranger, go visit a Benedictine Monastery. The Sisters at Our Lady of Grace took in 30 clergy women five years ago. We were loved, cared for, welcomed, fed, housed, entertained, taught, prayed for and prayed with for four years. The experience changed my life and changed the life and ministry of each one of the thirty women. Now there is a second group of Women Touched by Grace, being changed and formed by Benedictine Sisters practicing a ministry of hospitality that is centuries old.

Hospitality for us is an option. A welcoming spirit seems to be a matter of manners. In the days of Abraham and Sara and the days of ...

In case anyone is wondering, the destruction of the three homes was indeed an earth shaking experience.  In my office (the east end of the CE wing) I could hear and feel each blow.  The vibration of the building was felt as far away as the sanctuary.

After the rains we thought maybe the youth group was going to get the swimming pool they had requested in the planning phase.  The house basements held a great deal of water!

Obviously, the photos from the construction cam will be more exciting as things go up but it was facinating to watch the houses come down.

Pastor Teri Thomas

Check out the construction webcam by going to the Church website and looking under the "Information" tab for Construction Cam.  The camera is refreshed every 10 minutes.  Also, take a look at the project by looking out the windows in room 207.  Lots of mud and bricks at this point but just wait - new parking spots await!

Andy Longo

No lesson this week since I am not preaching.  Larry will preach on Matthew 6:24-34 and he calls it, Don't Worry ABout Tomorrow.

One of the fun things with having three pastors preach is how we sometimes feed off each other and other times we contradict each other.  Last week I talked about creation and our responsibility to take care of the amazing gift of creation and life that God has given us.  So basically, I said- PLEASE worry about tomorrow.  Now this week Larry says not to.  Maybe we could get Ruth to do the following Sunday on- What About Yesterday?

June 1st we will read some of the story of Noah and the flood and the Matthew 7:21-29 on Foundations.

I found this old sermon I did a few years ago on Noah...

May 29, 2005
The Divine “But…”
Genesis 6-9

As we move through the Book of Genesis we come to this well-known s ...

Starting Sunday May 18, 2008,  the Building Committee will have a representative available at the 10:00 AM coffee hour to answer questions about the building project.  This information table will continue each Sunday through the entire project.

Bob Gudgel

Every culture has been intrigued by the mystery of their origins. Where did we come from? How did we get here? Every religion and every society has some form of creation story. They are never designed as factual accounts of the origin of life but rather they express wonder that we exist at all and answer the questions in such a way that the stories can be told to the children and passed from generation to generation.

1:1–2:4a The book of Genesis contains two accounts of creation. This first is spacious, taking in the whole cosmos as viewed from earth, while the second has a more limited, localized setting, taking place entirely within the Garden of Eden (2:4b–3:24). According to the first account, God creates the world in 6 days and then rests on the 7th, thereby establishing the Sabbath day of rest as a part of the natural order. God’s week of creative work follows a perfectly symmetrical pattern. In the first three days, God marks out three earthly realms: (1) day and ni ...

This is from Ralph Milton who writes an on-line newsletter called Rumors.

Absolute darkness. I’ve only experienced it a few times. Most recently in the Kartchner Caverns in Arizona. At one point along the tour through those magnificent caves, the guides turns off all the lights. And the group just stands there. In total darkness. Your eyes strain for any scrap of light.
And it’s scary. Because we almost never experience total darkness and when it happens it touches some deep and unexplored anxiety.
The same is true of absolute silence. I’ve only experienced that in specialized recording studios designed to deaden all sound. If you stay there in the studio all by yourself it also becomes frightening. Your ears strain for a sound, to the point where you can hear your own heart beating.
Total darkness – total silence – is alien to most of us. I asked a totally blind friend once, what it was like to have total darkness and he began to talk abo ...

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday.  The key lesson is the first chapter of Genesis.  This is the first of the two accounts of creation.  It goes as follows-

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
6And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and the ...