The Annual Meeting. It is a requirement of both church and state law. Maybe we would be done with it if we weren’t so required.  I mean, after all, it takes away good nap time on a Sunday afternoon, and when do we ever not just vote unanimously for whatever action items or nominations come before us?  How do you spell rubber stamp?  Try a-n-n-u-a-l-m-e-e-t-i-n-g.

LPC is holding its Annual Meeting this coming Sunday.  1:00 p.m. for those not napping.

But what if our Annual Meeting is more than fulfilling the requirements of civil and ecclesial law?  What if we look carefully and see God’s fingerprints all over what we are tempted to see as an exercise in rubber stamping? Continue reading →

The Away Team is off to Guatemala tomorrow afternoon. Our southern contingent, the Brazilian Four, leave Belo Horizonte at 2:30 tomorrow morning.  They will arrive in Guatemala City 12 hours before we do. We’ll get about the business of becoming one team very early Sunday morning. Such joy!

For me the joy of the mission trip will be diminished just a little because of news Becky and I received earlier this week. For the past ten years we have been Plan Padrino sponsors of  a couple of students, a boy and a girl, at PLM School. One of the privileges of being an Away Team member has been sharing a meal with our sponsored kids and getting to know them a bit more year by year. Continue reading →

If you drove by LPC yesterday, you could not help but notice all the activity in the Chapel parking lot. The crane, a chipper, and other equipment.   And if you stayed for a while, you would have seen the ash trees come down.  In this round of tree removals – it isn’t the first and won’t be the last – 20 or more (dead) ash trees on our south side of Gillam Avenue parcel are being removed.  First, thanks to our Trustees who are such good stewards of the church’s property.  Thanks, too, for the generosity of the LPC congregation that allows us to undertake such projects.  But, second, no thanks to the EAB, the emerald ash borer.

The first emerald ash borer to arrive in North America booked passage on a freighter from China sometime around 2002.  Apparently he invited friends and family to join, for sixteen years later, 40 million North American ash trees have been killed by the infestation. You may read the sad story as told by Penn State.

Emerald ash borers are little green insects, beetles about a third of an inch long.  Their destructive power is immense. Continue reading →

This past week a new sign went up in front of the church. You might not notice it.  As part of our journey to a new denomination, our friends in the old denomination asked that we clarify our denominational identity on our signs and website and elsewhere. A fair request.

At first we thought it might just be a matter of inserting a new sign into the old sign frame. It turns out that the old sign frame was, well, old. As in rusty and not worth repairing. So the new sign has been installed in a new frame. Continue reading →

Becky and I just returned from a road trip to Memphis, Tennessee, where we enjoyed a wonderful post-Christmas visit with our daughter, son-in-law, and most-amazing-in-the-whole-world 11-month old grandson. From mid-morning on the drive down to early afternoon on the trip back, we were south of the Mason-Dixon line – a few miles of Maryland and West Virginiaand then a long north to south (and south to north) though the mountains of western Virginia and finally Tennessee from the northeast corner to the southwest corner (and southwest corner to northeast corner), nearly 500 miles of the Volunteer state.  Bucksnort at Exit 152 on I-40 west of Nashville is our favorite place name of the whole long trip.

There is that charm thing about the American South. From convenience store workers to restaurant wait staff, hotel clerks to the members of Riveroaks Presbyterian Church, we encountered nothing but “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” and “How y’all doin’?” as if they really cared about how we all were doing.

The line, of course, is that Southern charm is a mile wide and an inch deep.  Maybe so, I still like it. Even if the waiter doesn’t really care how we all are doing, it was nice to be asked. Continue reading →