Dust, Water and Seed

Have you ever heard the term "Cafeteria Christian"? These are folks that take a bit of this and a bit of that and try to construct a relationship with God from their pickings. They are usually the ones who will assure you that all churches teach the same thing, so it doesn't matter which church you go to. The stopper for me was a remark by Huston Smith, "If you wish to produce water, better to dig one well 60 feet deep than ten wells 6 feet deep."

What if you chose your church with the same care as you chose your spouse? Or, to look at it from the other side, what if you chose your spouse by investigating whether he or she had a good youth program and a good sounding choir, and a devastatingly handsome preacher? Choosing a spouse means digging deeply into the relationship to determine if this person is "the one". Why should church membership be undertaken any more lightly? Come join the congregation of Community Presbyterian church of Bellefonte, Ky for this week's sermon, "Dust, Water and Seed" by clicking on the blue text.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Radical Apples

The unrest in the Middle East has sent my mind back forty years to the protests of the 60's and 70's. I was there, as a policeman. Protests arise when the people sense that the world in which they live is being unfaithful to its own ideals, and they hope to change the direction of culture, hopefully toward something better. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Now, I'm pastor of a PROTESTant church, but the people I look out upon and love so dearly don't look like the young people I saw forty years ago. I can't picture them taking to the streets and waving flags. These are post-Enlightenment people -- people with an interest in a stable, predictable culture. How does the Word of God get heard in such a world?

Come join us for this week's sermon from Genesis 12:1-4a and Romans 4:1-5,13-17 I titled RADICAL APPLES by clicking on any of the blue text.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

The Trouble with God

Douglas Adams, in one of his hilarious books, remarked, "Who is this God person, anyway". Good question, that. English forces us into using nouns to talk about anything, and thus obscures the essential wisdom that God is not a thing, so the use of a noun as God's "name" misleads. When Moses inquired, he was told that God was Who I Will Be, or Who I AM. God is the way things are, and we would do well to pay attention when this God person tells us how to live well within His Creation. He knows more about it than we do. Come join the Congregation of Community Presbyterian of Bellefonte, KY for this week's sermon, The Trouble With God by clicking on the blue text.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Imagining a Convenient God

If I try to imagine God, the image I most often come up with is a grandfatherly sort, wearing white robes, and seated on a throne. However agreeable such an image is, that is not God. That is how I imagine God to be. It's an idol, and can cause real problems as we carry on our lives as Christians. The one, true God isn't limited by my imagination. God's name is "I am who I will be". God is the force that supports us all, limits and directs our lives, and it is God who grants the gift of faith. Sometimes we forget that, and start to think that faith is a human accomplishment, or that God grants faith to us because we are superior people. Stuff and nonsense.

Join the Congregation of Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte as we look into Paul's letter to his church at Corinth for some guidance about these matters in our sermon, "Imagining a Convenient God".

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

God's Eyeglasses

Our assumptions about "the way things are" are called our "myth". That's unfortunate, because modern people hear the word "myth" and think "fairy tale". Our myth, though, is a highly useful set of assumptions that tell us things like the height of a stairstep, or where the doorknob is located, and even what God wishes from us. The problem with assumptions is that they are like eyeglasses -- we look through them without being aware that they are coloring our perceptions of the world.

I've always thought that God is less interested in "grading our behavior" than He is with assuring that we see His creation and His presence within it clearly. From that perspective, perhaps the Beatitudes are the world as seen through God's Eyeglasses. Come join the congregation of Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky for this week's sermon from Micah and Matthew, called "God's Eyeglasses" by clicking on the blue text.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Disruption in the Cheap Seats

When my dad wrote prayers for church, they were full of "thees" and "thous" and he stuck "st" and "th" at the end of vowels, as if he thought God only understood Elizabethan English. I think it was his way of keeping God at a respectful distance. I don't know that this is the message of Matthew 4 at all when Matthew tells us of the call of the first four disciples. It looks to me as if God seeks us out way back in the cheap seats, where we actually live. Join the Congregation of Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Ky for this week's sermon, Disruption in the Cheap Seats by clicking any of the blue text.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Come and See

In John's Gospel we get a story of two of John the Baptist's disciples meeting Jesus. When they ask where he is staying, Jesus answers, cryptically, "Come and See". Whatever they saw energized them. Would they see the same thing in a contemporary church? Join the congregation of Community Presbyterian Church by clicking on any blue text for this week's sermon from John 1, "Come and See".

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.