By Brother Brian Shimer It took perseverance to pack up the car each Friday, drive 150 miles with two children (one 2.5 year old and the other a 2 month old, to begin with) to reach the small, country church I pastored for a year as a seminary student. It took commitment to “keep on, […]
By Brother Tom Albin The Bible names nine qualities or “fruit” of the Holy Spirit. This week I would like to suggest a tenth—GRATITUDE. Here are the nine identified in Galatians 5:22-23. (Revised Standard Version Updated Edition) …the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is […]
By Brother Matthew Henson My college roommate posted a saying in our apartment that stated, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, which is why we call it the present.” Each day when I would walk past this sign, I would consider the words in my mind, but sadly, I fear, […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTJzE4dLNhE By Brother Steve Rankin I think it was Christmas 1987 when Joni gave me a cassette (yes, kids, a cassette) of a guy I’d never heard of. His name was Michael Card, and the album/cassette was called “The Final Word.” I started listening and was quickly taken with Card’s ability to write music that […]
By Brother Matt Henson As a baby, I was diagnosed with asthma. Over the years, there have been times when I battled to find my breath when having an asthma attack. One of the worst attacks I ever had was a time in high school where my ability to walk from the couch to the […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddBDEjWMjKo&t=4s By Brother Tom Albin I grew up in a small Methodist Church in Quinter, Kansas. This was before the merger with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968 that gave birth to The United Methodist Church. In those days we sang a few hymns by John Wesley and many by his younger brother, Charles […]
By Brother Matt Henson My wife and I sang to our children as part of our nighttime ritual. It was interesting to see which songs encouraged them to relax and fall into a sleepy state. There were some songs that stirred them and there were some they would cry when we sang them. There was […]
By Brother Matt Henson As a preacher’s kid, I literally grew up in the church. We would attend Sunday morning worship and Sunday evening worship. For the most part, our Sunday morning worship songs would come from the hymnal, while the Sunday evening songs would incorporate another smaller songbook that included choruses and newer songs […]
By Brother Stephen Rankin When I was a kid in the 1960s, the Methodist churches that my father served as pastor were still having Sunday evening worship. The churches were small, and especially on Sunday evenings, a relative few of the regular congregation—maybe ten or fifteen—came back for the evening service. These times were always […]
By Gary K. Wheeler “Chick” was his nickname. He was my pastor as I grew up in a United Methodist Church in the early 1970s. He had the joy of the Lord, the words of an evangelist, and the heart of a shepherd. My family and I were saved under his leadership, and he introduced […]
