Last week in our exploration of membership we talked about the critical membership quality of cultivating a personal spiritual practice.  I want to thank those of you who took the time to shoot me an email telling me what you planned to practice this week; I hope all of you had some time to take a step back and think about how it is you practice your personal spiritual life. Today, instead… Read More

A few years ago Rob Bell shocked the evangelical world by saying out loud what a lot of us were thinking: that maybe our old ideas of hell weren’t really valid.  He was questioning the idea that people who don’t believe exactly like we do will spend eternity in everlasting torture, separated from God and from anything good. It makes sense that he would question this traditional perspective.  After all, most everything… Read More

For the next few weeks in worship we’re talking frankly about some hallmarks of membership.  This past Sunday we spoke about baptism.  After conversations with Calvary member and super thoughtful person, Trey Sullivan, I challenged him to write some of his thoughts down.  I am delighted to share them with you as Trey shares his debut as guest blogger on Talk With the Preacher. Yesterday in worship we remembered our baptisms. In… Read More

To finish our Advent series devoted to the Advent Conspiracy, four Calvary members shared reflections with the congregation about their experiences this Advent.  Each one was assigned one of the four emphases of the season: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.  Here are their reflections: Doing Christmas Differently: Our Stories WORSHIP FULLY, by Susan Sevier That first week of Advent, when we began to talk about this movement called… Read More