Draw near to God…
As you can see from the attached photo, I couldn’t resist going to Yosemite with my good friend Ron Taylor. We put in a little effort (4:30am departure from Santa Cruz and 8 mile cross-country ski trek) in order to be immersed in God’s beauty and …
Mornings of the Roundtable
Last Sunday we launched out series “We Still Believe” with the PLT roundtable discussion as the main part of the “sermon”….
What Do We Believe?
As we head towards our sermon series “We Still Believe” I’d like you to read and consider the Apostles Creed, copied below. I grew up in a church that recited this weekly and appreciate the simplicity and clarity. This brief, yet powerful confession has been…
Peace & Vision
This past Sunday we considered the real “Peace” that Jesus brought when He came to earth as announced by the Angels. We discovered that He left us His peace through the sending of the Holy Spirit we have with us now all the time. Remember the…
Happy Holy Days
What a pleasure to experience our annual Thanksgiving service last Sunday. Weren’t you grateful for all of the gratitude? And how about that POTLUCK?? I got in line as one of the last people and the tables were still completely stocked full of food and deserts. The conversations around the…
How to be Thankful
I want to give a special encouragement to our church community to be sure to attend and participate in this Sunday’s worship service at 9:30am. As most of you know, this special service is one of the best of…
Gifted Homework?
This week I uttered a strange statement during the Equipping Hour…”you have homework!”. It wasn’t the normal charge—to put into practice what the Lord has given to us in message or class in the ACE—it was actual reading/writing/arithmetic stuff….
Grateful for the Ordinary
The past few weeks have been pretty warm. Actually some of those days were down right blazing HOT. How did you manage the heat? Did you lose some houseplants? Was sleep a challenge? Did you take 5 showers a day? I was in Southern California for…
Lord of the Harvest
During the last month, my household has been enjoying 3 different kinds of peaches, an abundance of plums, and now we are harvesting nectarines and tomatoes. Apples and raspberries look to be in the coming weeks. We’ve given some…
Living “Wide Open”
Our upcoming sermon is called “Wide Open” on Aug 7th, dealing with Acts 10 and the faith being made open to the whole world. Up until that time most believed that faith in God was…
Creative Ways to Connect This Summer
It is the middle of summer. I hope you are enjoying the extra daylight, warm days and all the activities that happen this time of year. Let me encourage you to do them WITH people. An encouragement for fellowship…and summertime is a wonderful time for it. Here’s a few creative ways to connect with others this week…
Invisible Person
As we continue on in our “Summer in the Spirit” series I want to make sure we don’t miss the most basic and the most important truth—the Holy Spirit is a person (not human, but a distinct entity). The Holy Spirit is…
Begin with Waiting
Last Sunday we looked at Acts 1, in our sermon series “Summer in the Spirit”. We found that even though Jesus gave clear directives to spread the Good News locally and globally, His followers were first told to wait…their focus wasn’t on the doing, it was on the waiting…
Newsflash: Pastor Attends Church
I went to church last Sunday. No really—"I went to church”. For the first time in a while, I basically had no part in putting on the worship service. Sure, I was..
A Full Fifth
I wanted to use this space to mention a few things from our time together for “5th Sunday”, our "worship of service" in place of our normal Sunday morning Worship Service. As you know…
Blessings Harmonized
As you probably know, we hosted the Moody Bible Institute Chorale on Wednesday evening for a concert. The event had been rescheduled three times in the last year and a half due to covid concerns. Admittedly, I was skeptical that it was going to…
Is Busy Giving You Pause?
May is a very full month around here! True story—I wrote a first draft of today’s “pastoral blurb” yesterday morning to ensure that I got it to Dave before the deadline to send in the all-church email. The piece I wrote has to do with how many things we have going on in….
The Way We Give
If you’ve been around anyone in a leadership role at HSCC the past few weeks, you know the church is in “budget season". Staff are figuring out costs for plans, Deacon liaisons are connecting and submitting requests, the PLT is discussing and praying through the…
Where’s My Peace?
This morning I was feeling "off"…some tiredness, discouragement and the weight of the many responsibilities and cares of life. A friend shared with me a similar incident he’d had a few days earlier and captured it with…