I read a book awhile back called Difficult Conversations, and I thought it was good. The authors provide all sorts of strategies for defusing a potentially explosive situation, relaxing a likely tense environment as you begin that difficult conversation. From reprimanding an employee to confronting a family member; from expressing disappointment or bringing disappointment, the book gives examples from the work place, marriage, family and friendship. With confidence they assert that every difficult conversation can be had in ways that are healthy and life-giving.

The authors never had to tell someone they were missed at church. Continue reading →

The execution of 21 Coptic Christians shown in the ISIS video released this past Sunday is disturbing. It is frightening.  It drives us to our knees beseeching God’s mercy and protection. David’s pleas in Psalm 31 are among today’s reading from The Daily Office. I prayed for Coptic brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East and Africa, as I read the Psalm.

Much has been written about the martyrdom of these brothers in Christ, and, indeed, they are brothers and martyrs. Surely the world is not worthy of them. Continue reading →

This is the last in a series of Guatemala Diary E-mail posts
Thursday Night

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still. Exodus 14:14

These words from Exodus were the basis of our team devotional for the day.  They were directed at the tendency of some of us, especially North Americans, to try to solve every problem, untie every knot, ease every tension – real or imagined. Continue reading →

3:45 tomorrow morning.  That’s church parking lot time for the members of the Guatemala Mission Away Team.  We complain and brag about it in jest.  In fact, there is no virtue in it and it’s a minor inconvenience.  But it is how the week begins and it says something about a week marked by minor inconvenience for the sake of something important.

Technology willing, those on the church email list will receive “Guatemala Diary”  updates throughout the week as we try to tell some stories and share some photos that might help explain this week on the shores of Lake Atitlan in the highlands of Guatemala. Continue reading →

This is the 339^th edition of the LPC E-pistle which turns seven years old on Sunday.  It’s come to you an average of 48 times a year since 2008. I hope you have enjoyed these seven years of Friday bits of news and notes.  I have.

On Friday, February 1, 2008, I had just finished my first week of work at LPC and had decided that I would continue a news update and blog practice I had begun several years earlier at Park Presbyterian Church in Beaver, PA. Every Friday I’d send an update of prayer concerns, some news and announcement highlights from the life of the church, and then my favorite part, my own comments on “on the world, the life of faith and Langhorne Church.” Continue reading →