This is the final week of the summer softball season for Ila’s NCIL league that plays at Whetstone Park.  I’ve been co-coaching along with several other parents since early May.  We’ve lost more games than we’ve won, and the 9-11 age range makes for quite a developmental spread.  But this…

Last Sunday Joel made a very brief reference in his sermon to the recently released movie, Inside Out 2 as a way to illustrate that you could take in the second part of something (his two-part sermon) without the first, but you’d probably be missing out on some things. When…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” We come into this world completely dependent on others to keep us alive.  When we reach adolescence, we learn a healthy independence from our caretakers.  When we grow up, we come to realize we have been interdependent all along. Dependence – Independence –…

Last Thursday through Saturday, five of us from CMC represented the congregation at the Central District Conference annual meeting.  Our biennial theme is “Listen! Wisdom is Calling.” I have long appreciated that the conference sees its congregations, in the words of a key document, as “something like a family of…

Last week, I had the opportunity to help chaperone a group of four of CMC’s high school boys on a service-learning trip through Appalachia Build (formerly known as SWAP). We spent the week in Kimball, West Virginia building a deck with a ramp for a household that included a young…