(I preached this sermon on Sunday in response to the readings – Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, and John 10:11-18. You can find the full sermon and service on our website – www.ststephenlc.org.) If you saw a person carrying a hose and running towards a fire, while wearing protective...

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Prayer for April 21, 2021: Please pray with me. God who shows your wounds and who invites us to see them and touch them, we are scared. We’d rather run away and hide. We’d rather avert our eyes and pretend we don’t see them. But you are wounded. We...

(I preached the following sermon on Sunday, April 18, 2021 in response to Luke 24:36b-48. You can find a recorded version of the sermon as well as the entire service at www.ststephenlc.org). This past week, three things caught my attention.  The first one was the shooting of Daunte Wright, a...

Prayer for April 16, 2021: Please pray with me. Holy God, you walk with us, you call to us, you reach out to us, you pitch your tent with us, you save us over and over again, and you created us. And for some reason we have doubt that...

Prayer for April 21, 2021: Please pray with me. God who is in control, we struggle with the idea of control. We think we are in control. How silly. Why are we so drawn to control? Because it makes us feel like a god? Or what we envision what...

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(I preached this sermon on Sunday, April 11, 2021 in response to Acts 4:32-35. You can find the recording of the sermon and the entire worship service on our church website – www.ststephenlc.org.) I’m currently reading a fascinating book called “Church Refugees” by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope.  It’s about...

“The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.”...

Why do people invest so much energy in defending systems that are not life-giving? We have mass shootings. I don’t know of anyone who thinks this is a good thing. Yet, I hear plenty of excuses as to why nothing related to this can change? Why? Why are we...