Why VBS Matters

Vacation Bible School has got to be one of the most familiar, participated in, and long- running programs in the church.  Adult members of all ages remember their own VBS experiences and many have helped lead countless sessions of this summer staple. 

I told you last week that 15% or more of American churches have held their last VBS in the past decade, the old program falling victim to our busy life-styles and glitzy competition from all sorts of summer camps and seminars for our on-their-way-to-unimagined-success kids. 

VBS remains a strong program at LPC, and I pray that it remains strong as it swims against the cultural currents.  So, why does VBS matter? Continue reading →

VBS – with or without guardrails

If it's July, it must be Vacation Bible School.  For those of us who were raised in the church or have been raising our kids in the church, Vacation Bible School in July is about as predictable as Christmas in December.  Except that it is becoming less and less predictable.  The The Barna Group reports that in the last decade some 38,000 churches in the U.S. have quit offering VBS.  They site lack of leaders and being too busy as primary excuses.  

One of the most important tasks church leaders face is the task of determining when a program or ministry has run its course.  Our Session will be doing some of that hard work in the coming months.  But I've got a hunch that VBS has a lot of life left to it, so long as we adults don't get too busy or too distracted to make it happen every July. Continue reading →

When the Least of These His Brothers is a Con Artist

I've been through this a hundred times before, but it still gets to me.  Earlier in the week I received a phone message asking for a return call and telling me that it was a matter of utmost urgency.  The voice was that of an older man and the phone number included an extension.  It turned out that I was correct in assuming that it was a motel room.

Jim, I'll call him, told me his story. He and his wife who was still recovering from heart surgery in May had been evicted from the little house they rented in another part of Bucks County when there had been a foul up with the social security and veteran's disability checks they use to live on month by month.  An agency working with a consortium of churches in Upper Bucks had been able to provide them with two nights lodging at a motel on Street Road, but that's all they could do.  Fortunately, a cousin was willing to take them in, but he asked if they could give just another day before they came over.  So just a one night gap. Continue reading →

Are Red, White and Blue Liturgical Colors?

I'm looking forward to worship on Sunday.  Part of the service will be given over to a "Celebration for the Gift of the Nation."  We will hear excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "I Have a Dream" speech.  We will sing familiar national hymns that should stir our hearts. And I say, "Of, course, wear your red, white and blue." 

While respecting those Christian traditions that prefer that a safer distance be kept between church and state, with a bit of fear and trembling, I think it wise that we allow a celebration like Sunday's from time to time. But it will be a bounded celebration. You will notice in the order of worship that the center of the service will be, properly, the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the Lord's Table. In the call to worship, the Psalmist will remind us that, "The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save," an important reminder in a world where we tend to trust foolishly the state's power to make right what has gone wrong or to change the nature of human persons or human history. In our time of confession we will admit national sins and humbly ask that God "mend our every flaw." Continue reading →