Our congregation has a great tradition from over the years called the “Passing the Torch” night with the teen ministry. It’s a special teen devotional that celebrates graduating high school seniors and welcomes students entering high school along with their parents. This year’s event featured some great fellowship time and lawn games (including some spirited tug-of-war battles), a lesson and a ceremony where an actual torch was passed from the group of graduating seniors to the new high schoolers with an inspiring charge given by our teen minister. I was honored to be asked to teach the lesson for the (more…)

( Note (1/4/16):  these are my raw notes from the communion message from 12/27/15.  I may revise these to make them more readable later, but here they are for now…) Last Sunday / worship service of 2015 end of the year, but beginning of a new year  – look back at fun memories, victories but also disappointments and failures  – look ahead to resolutions, goals, new opportunities, with new challenges ending things well:   2 villians of of Christmas and what they were like after Christmas was over  – Scrooge quote “And it was always said of him, that he (more…)