I hadn’t given it a second thought – the massacre of the high school students in Florida. My job is sometimes demanding and I was attending to the demands of the job. I had glanced at my news feed sometime Wednesday afternoon; I remember adding the families and loved ones of the Florida school shooting to the prayer list for Sunday morning.  But things demanded my attention, and my time and energy was focused in their direction. No apologies.

In fact, it was not until 24 hours later that the Florida shootings wrestled my attention away from other demanding things. Continue reading →

We are off to Guatemala!  Some of you may know that Chet Marshall and I left yesterday in order to spend some time with Pat and Yesenia Opperman, an American-Guatemalan couple who work together in a ministry they call A Couple of Christians, aka Misioneros Cristianos Unidos.  LPC’s Mission Budget supports Pat and Yesenia, and Chet and I are looking forward to the opportunity to see the work first hand.  The rest of the team follows early tomorrow morning and will be together in Guatemala City until early Sunday morning when we journey to San Lucas Toliman and the shore of Lake Atitlan.

The Guatemala Mission Trip is not just a great tradition, but also an important part of our life as a church. For those who are able to travel to Guatemala, it is an opportunity for cross-cultural ministry and an experience of the global church that can’t be had at home. For all of us at LPC it is a reminder of our connection with the global church and an opportunity to give and receive in the name of Christ.

It is a great tradition and a valued part of our life together, but that is not why some of us go and all of us are part of work in Guatemala. We go because we are able. We go because we must. We go because Jesus sends us.

As we say often because it should be said often, the plaque on the back is a reminder of an essential part of the Christian life. “You are Now Entering the Mission Field.”  Mission is not something we do one week a year, or only a program of the church. Mission is what we do because “missionary” is who we are – each of us.

So while some of us work hard, sleep well, and enjoy 70-degree weather on the shore of the lake, all of us will be engaged in mission – most of us in the mission fields of work, home, school, family, and neighborhood. All of us will be witnesses to Jesus and his love, in word and in deed, we will share our joy and our hope.

As the “Home Team” has been called to pray for those with bearing the privilege and the responsibility of serving on the “Away Team,” please know that the “Away Team” will be praying for each of you each day we are away.  Bearing witness to Jesus and his love at work, home, school, family, and neighborhood may be a more challenging work than the work we will do on the shores of the lake!

See you next week!

This coming Thursday, February 1, will mark the official Tenth Anniversary of Becky’s and my time at LPC.  Official duties began February 1, 2008, though I had started working off the clock a week earlier by attending a Men’s Retreat at Harvey Cedars Conference Center. It was my first time on the Jersey Shore and a wonderful introduction to the men of LPC.

February 1, 2008, was a Friday; the first of 490 Fridays on which this email/blog was sent to LPC folks and a few others.  Becky’s first volunteer work at LPC was setting up the WordPress platform for the E-pistle, and it was ready to go that first day on the job. Yes, according to WordPress there are now 490 E-pistle posts in the archives.  The math is pretty easy. 49 Fridays a year.

The tagline in the header of the email edition of the E-pistle reads, “News and Updates from LPC/Pastor Bill’s comments on faith, life, and the world.”  The blog edition sticks to the comments on faith, life, and the world. Continue reading →

The advertisements on a social media feed are custom fed to each one of us.  They take our demographics, our browsing history, and whatever other bits of information we drop along the way and build an ad campaign just for us. In the weeks before Christmas I kept seeing ads for dollhouse furniture on my Facebook feed. Becky was looking for a Christmas gift for one of our granddaughters and sent me some links. Google told Facebook all about it.  For several weeks Santa’s would-be suppliers tried to entice me with deals on their most popular lines. Little Ada loved the gift, but I am not sure the ad campaign had much effect. Continue reading →

Springs of Living Water or a cesspool?

This morning’s newsfeed is abuzz with reports that President Trump has likened countries in the global south, specifically Haiti, El Salvador, and all of Africa, to cesspools; his word choice was coarser than mine, however. Though multiple reports confirm the comments, the president denies the particular words, but says his language was tough.

The president’s reported words are troubling if for no other reason than the continued degrading of our public discourse. But there are other reasons. Christians know the President’s cesspool countries to be a part of the world our God loves so much as to send his only son for its redemption and renewal. Christians never see a cesspool. They see the possibility of a spring of Living Water bubbling up to eternal life. Continue reading →