Blog

This Sunday we begin a sermon series from the book of Isaiah: "Holy, Wholly, Holy." The prophet Isaiah is the Shakespeare of the Bible. He covers the heights and depths of human experience, takes us from the cesspool of our depravity to the very glory of the presence of God, and calls us from his first words to his last to be wholly God's. Our tendency is to be immersed in our own lives and to dabble in the things of God. Isaiah beckons us to stop and consider the King who gave us the breath....

Last Sunday I looked at the topic of homosexuality and tried to speak clearly and lovingly to the issue. One thing I didn't do is provide specific help for those who struggle with same-sex attraction. This post is a small attempt to do that. Most of it comes from Michael R. Emlet, who wrote a 2014 article on the topic ("Five Ministry Priorities for Those Struggling with Same-Sex Attraction," Journal of Biblical Counseling 28:3).

Last Sunday, while our young adults were away at a retreat in Virginia, I made a pastoral appeal to our older adult members to consider how they might get involved to serve their younger adult peers. Part of what I shared included ideas for how to get involved. Here are some highlights:

In a 2002 Dilbert cartoon, Wally hands a piece of paper to the "pointy-haired boss." The oblivious boss says, "Wally, your status report is just a bunch of buzzwords strung together." Wally responds in the next panel, "I've been giving you that same status report every week for eleven years." And in the third panel he adds, "Five years ago you adopted it as our mission statement."

That's the risk with a mission statement—that it would become a trite, trendy, and lifeless set of words that mean something at one time but die out after a few weeks of use.

Thank you to all those who participated in the initial information meeting about Safe Families For Children!

Read below for the next steps for those who continue to have interest in helping with SFFC.

We'd like to know your level of interest and to get you on our email list. You can also RSVP for the training event at the Auer's Home this Saturday.

"I'm Interested" Form

We are excited to tell you about an opportunity to get involved in our community through a ministry called Safe Families for Children. Safe Families is a volunteer ministry that exists to provide biblical hospitality, love, and support to families in crisis, largely through providing parents with safe places for their children to stay while they work to resolve whatever crises that they are experiencing, such as unemployment, homelessness, or financial difficulty. This ministry equips churches like ours to create support networks for desperate people in our community who have no one to turn to in times of crisis. They do this through creating teams of people to come alongside of these families in various roles. This is one of the really neat things about Safe Families - that there are many ways to be involved.

It is fitting that our sermon on Mother's Day happened to be on the grace of God. There's nothing a mom needs more than that. And both prove to be very different than we at first expected.

Last November our church members sponsored 100 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes for boys ages 10 -14. OCC receives the least number of boxes for this particular group so we choose to focus solely on packing quality boxes that included school supplies, comb, soap, socks, small toys, and either a soccer ball and pump or a small tool kit. The Mike Noel Home Group hosted a packing party and all 100 boxes were registered to be tracked as to their final destination. So where did they go?

A tired, older ex-convict once sent a letter to a younger minister of the gospel. The two had worked together for years, and now the younger minister was venturing off on his own. The older man had traveled extensively for the sake of the gospel and wanted his younger protege to do well in the face of significant challenges. He would need guidance on some critical areas, courage to face the inevitable challenges to gospel ministry in a hostile land, and a heavy dose of reminders about the grace of God. We call this writing, "The Letter of Paul to Titus."