There is a nice coincidence between this week’s worship theme, Land, and where we are at in the adult Sunday school study of the Gospel of Mark. Next class we will pick up at Mark 4:35, when Jesus, having finished teaching in parables from the shores of the Sea of Galilee, tells his disciples, “Let us go to the other side.” It is the first of five times (also 5:1,21; 6:45; 8:13) in the next four chapters that Mark utilizes that phrase, “the other side” – the popular teacher and healer whose entire ministry up to that point had taken place in his home region of Galilee, now shuttling back...
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Today is Ash Wednesday and it snowed this morning and a little more this afternoon. Today is the beginning of Lent, a day in which we recite these words to one another: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” Despite the cold forecast ahead, and despite the groundhog supposedly seeing his shadow two weeks ago, the snow will soon enough be gone. “Remember, snow, that you are water, and to water you will return.”
Ash Wednesday is our annual reminder of the impermanence of all things. Snow, bodies, consumer goods, social status: it will not stand. Isaiah and the...
Last evening the Gifts Discernment Committee met at church. This is the group charged with inviting members to serve on various Commissions each year. This is the group thankful for the strong response received from the Gifts Discernment forms in which you named people you felt were gifted to lead us in areas such as Worship, Christian Education, Community Life, and Mission. This is the group that could very likely be giving you a phone call in the next few weeks.
Columbus Mennonite is what you might call a “highly participatory community.” “Shared ministry” is another way this...
Doing justice is hard work. It’s hard figuring out how to do it and it’s hard to do. It’s slow moving and tiring. It usually involves just showing up, which isn’t necessarily all that fulfilling in itself.
One of the things that we at CMC have going for us is that we do not work for justice alone. We are a part of a coalition of 50 congregations across Franklin County, known collectively as BREAD (Building Responsibility, Equality, And Dignity), who identity one significant issue every year and work for justice in one specific way on that issue.
This week I’m in Orlando,...
This Sunday we will celebrate six jr. youth coming of age. The scripture they have chosen to shape the worship theme is Jeremiah 1:1-14. After an initial call from the Lord to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah’s response that he is too young and cannot speak, the Lord asks him a question: “What do you see?”
Along with pondering this simple but profound question I’ve also been pondering what we don’t see – or what just goes unseen. Two weeks ago I was driving up to Bluffton for a pastor-peer meeting. As I traveled north the trees started to become covered with a thin, and then rather thick...