The topic of grief has been on mind a lot lately, and I don’t appear to be the only one. Pastor Laura and I recently returned from our fall continuing education conference put on by the synod where the topic was “Grief: Reflecting on Loss, Love, and Leadership.” And here at Bethlehem we have had …
Dear People of Bethlehem, Blessings in this Fall season. We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your faithful giving to Bethlehem, just as we do each Sunday. But in this single letter we send out each fall, it is also time to look together with you, toward all that lies ahead. What …
In the process of writing a sermon for Sunday morning there is often quite a bit that ends up on the cutting room floor. Whether it’s cut for time, or because the sermon ended up going in a slightly different direction (they have a way of developing and changing even as you are writing them), …
The Pacifica Synod Assembly was held in Irvine, CA two weeks ago. Before we dive into the specifics of what all happened over those three days, I want to take a cue from Bob Michelet. When he shared about the assembly during worship on the Sunday after the assembly, he wisely reminded us that part of being …
Springtime Greetings Dear People of Bethlehem, Like most people, I tend to associate spring with nature – budding flowers, new stems shooting up from previously snow-covered plots (my Midwestern roots still clearly have an influence), and the glorious green of new growth. I recently learned something interesting about plant behavior, specifically about how trees communicate …
Greetings Dear People of Bethlehem, I attended a webinar last week and one of the speakers, a pastor by the name of Carrington Moore, spoke about the sabbath, and how we understand rest, in a way that really resonated with me. If you will recall, in Genesis, after God created the heavens and the earth. …
Happy New Year Dear People of Bethlehem, As we look forward to 2022, and all that the new year will bring, I first want to say thank you for all the ways that you have blessed my life over the past year. Your Christmas gift for myself and Pastor Laura was so incredibly generous. It …
November Blessings Dear People of Bethlehem, A few weeks ago, my hometown of Half Moon Bay (the self-proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world) held its annual Pumpkin Weigh-Off. This year’s winner was a 2191-pound behemoth from Olympia, WA. I used to live just a block away from where the weigh-off takes place. And I can …
September Greetings Dear People of Bethlehem, I have recently become a diehard fan of the show Ted Lasso on Apple TV. Anyone in need of a good laugh (and I think that’s pretty much everyone these days) definitely needs to check it out. It is absolutely hilarious, and results in me genuinely laughing out loud …
Summer Blessings Bethlehem! As the world has continued to open up over the past several weeks I have found my response to it all to be very interesting. At certain times, I find that I can basically pretend that the past 15 months never happened, and slip right back into “business as usual” without so …