Sermon Blog

I saw the headlines on Thursday morning and part of me wanted to cry out like the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord, how long will the wicked win?”  Charleston, South Carolina—a horrendous massacre, attempts at another racial uprising.  And while this happened in Charleston, South Carolina, 290 miles from here—it truly hits a lot closer to home.  Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and opened fire, killing nine of, not only our brothers and sisters in Christ, but our brothers and sisters within our Wesleyan Methodist heritage.  As the week moved on, I learned that it hit even closer to home, as I found out that in Roof’s confessed attempt to start a “race war,” two of those killed were the cousins of one of my colleagues and friends, Reverend Johnnie Wright, pastor of Mebane United Methodist Church, not 290 miles from here, but less than fifteen miles.  It is a heartbreaking story of a congregation living out the Gospel, welcoming the st...

This year makes my first intentional attempt at growing vegetables. When I was a student pastor we had a volunteer tomato plant come up in the back yard of the parsonage.  That experience was interesting.  Never having done any gardening before, I way over fertilized that tomato plant and it grew big enough that it would dwarf most of the shrubs around any of our homes.  It was hearty enough that it withstood the winds of Hurricane Fran while possible funnel clouds ripped the tops out of many of our neighbors’ trees and it was still producing tomatoes when the mid-November frost came in. This year I haven’t done the “over-fertilization” and we probably won’t have a repeat of that volunteer.  But, if any of you come by the parsonage, you will see our German Johnson in the pot on the front porch.  You will also see our first attempt at growing peppers as we are also raising a chocolate habanero that was given to me as a seedling by Eber, one of my friends from Bi...