John Smoltz was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame this past week, and his Cooperstown speech has made for good discussion among fans.  Included in his speech on Sunday was a warning to parents who have made competitive youth baseball a year-round sport. Specifically he warned about damage being done to young pitching arms, and aggressive parents whose dreams for their child’s professional career are stronger than any twelve-year old’s could possibly be.

Children matter. But sometimes it seems as if children matter in the same way that mom and apple pie matter. More lip service than getting down on the floor to play with a toddler or seeing to bed-time prayers with an eight-year old or talking through hurt feelings tough decisions with a teenager. Continue reading →

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

The youngest kids among the 120 or so who will be a part of this year’s VBS at LPC are four years old. The oldest are 12 or 13. Even without anticipating much change in life expectancy, we will be well into the 22nd Century when many of these children are old.

Let the techno-buffs and the futurists debate what that 22nd world may bring. We can barely imagine what may be, and there is not a whole lot we can say for certain. Utopia or dystopia, who knows? There’s one thing we can know for sure: it will be a world seasoned with the salt of the gospel, illuminated by the good works of those who are following Jesus. We know for sure because of VBS. More precisely because of what VBS represents.  VBS represents the promise of faithful parents and a supporting church to raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Continue reading →

Friends of LPC’s Facebook page know that we’re pretty excited about sharing Sunday’s worship services with Dr. John and Jess Cropsey and their three children. John will bring the message and we’ll talk with Jess some about our Kibuye School projects.

John and Jess Cropsey are mission partners in Burundi, one of the poorest countries on the planet. They lead a team of a dozen or more physicians, educators, and their families called to build a medical school and hospital in a place where almost none exist. They are Christians committed doing whatever they do, in word or in deed, in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through him. Word and Deed is the name of the team’s blog – continually updated and always worth reading. Take a look. Continue reading →

Sally, our office manager, was on vacation this past week, and so the rest of us took turns picking up the phone when it rang. Hardly a bother, it was nice to talk to a parent wanting to register a child for Vacation Bible School or a volunteer trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the state’s new child protection act.

Hardly a bother, except. Except for those calls that always start the same way, “May I speak to the person responsible for the Verizon bill?” Even, “I need to speak to the person responsible for the PECO account.” Their point, of course, is going to be a pitch for a new long distance carrier or a better electricity supplier. My point is to dispatch them a quickly as I can. Dispatch as in hang up as soon as I can. Continue reading →