by Steve Sheely | Sep 13, 2014 | Pastors Blog
Sometimes the answer to “who is my neighbor?” is “the person who lives near you.” When I was in college I had a summer job as a tree surgeon. And we did not use a truck-mounted cherry-picker. We used ropes. Most of the time our task was ‘fine pruning.’ Fine pruning...
by Steve Sheely | Aug 13, 2014 | Pastors Blog
After all the rhetoric about the problems and lawsuits this ordinance would cause I have not heard a thing. I am white. I am a married male. I have graduate degrees and I own my own home (well, me and the bank). I am in good health. And compared to the global...
by Steve Sheely | Jul 13, 2014 | Pastors Blog
I was so proud of my congregation for participating in this process with such trust. It is hard to find solid numbers, but some things are certain: Older churches are in decline, newer churches are more likely to be growing. Mainline churches are struggling,...
by Steve Sheely | May 13, 2014 | Pastors Blog
This analogy is my favorite one to describe what it is like being a pastor in the 21st-century. Not to mention that scuba diving in Iceland sounds like the most awesome thing ever. There is a lake in Iceland. It is cold and clear and amazing. Amazing because deep in...
by Steve Sheely | Mar 13, 2014 | Family Gardens, Pastors Blog
If we’re not careful our churches, and our faith, can become mostly cerebral. With a prevailing emphasis on didacticism and privacy-in-the-pew, our faith can become more like Greek thought than Semitic practice. Oh, and by the way, I harvested 758 tomatoes from a...
by Steve Sheely | Feb 13, 2014 | Pastors Blog
The analogy I tend to use is ‘overdone’, like a charred turkey ceremoniously taken out of the oven on Thanksgiving day. We are notoriously adept at developing the Christian religion in ways that have nothing to do with what God intended. Perhaps that gives us the...
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