Sermon Blog

I want to tell you about four men.   If you want to treat this as a quiz, number a blank spot on your bulletin from one to four and you can attempt to guess who they are. The first was a college drop out.   He tried his hand as an executive for a technology company.   He was fired.   His first attempt as a businessman failed.   He was even forcibly removed as the executive of a company he founded. The second man was an English teacher who tried his hand at writing.   However, when he had completed his first novel, it was rejected at least thirty times. The third man applied three times to the University of Southern California School of Theater, Film, and Television…and was rejected each time. The fourth man “was fired as a newspaper editor because ‘he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.’   He had to close his first studio because he could not pay his rent.   He was even told one of his ideas “would never work because…[it] wou...

  My name is Lee Roy Pittard III.   My dad was Lee Roy Pittard Jr.   My grandfather was Lee Roy Pittard.   Many folks, especially family members, assumed that when I had a son, there would be a Lee Roy Pittard IV.   So where is he?   His name is David Carl “Davey” Pittard, named not after my grandfather, dad, and myself, but named after the late Davey Allison.   Why?   The Davey Allison story is another story for another time.   Feel free to ask Anita or myself if you are curious.   However, here is why there is no IV.   My grandfather passed away when I was twelve years old.   I don’t remember the year, but somewhere between 10 to 12 years later, I received mail that actually was for my grandfather.   When I was in college, Sears accidently swapped my dad’s charge account and my own.   I made the decision then that there would not be a IV.   Only after two incidents?   Yes, but I knew the confusion wou...

  It is the season.   How many of you have attended or been invited to a wedding over the course of the last month, or have one in the new few weeks.   Over the last three weekends, I have known five couples that decided to tie the knot.   It is not simply a recent trend.   More than half of the weddings I have performed in the last eighteen years have taken place in the months of May and June.   If you look at the anniversary celebrations in the newsletter, this congregation celebrates twice as many marriages in June than any other month.   I began wondering if there was a reason for the popularity of May and June weddings.   I thought maybe it had to do with their being the months with the least chance of unsettled weather, then I realized that I was thinking regionally, I mean, it was only a couple of weeks ago that Colorado was still dealing with a snowstorm, and we’ve had weekends full of unsettled weather recently.   That regiona...