Pastor's Blog

We were blessed to be hosted by our dear friends, Steve and Jeannie Schlissel. Seeing the sights in NYC was great. Very enjoyable. But it paled in comparison with the fellowship we had with this faithful Christian family. Unfortunately the lighting didn't allow us to get as clear a picture as we would have liked. Pictured are Steve, Jeannie, Jedidiah (son), Esther (daughter), Rebeccah (daughter), Craig Brann (son-in-law).

Melinda and I will be heading to Brooklyn tomorrow. We'll be visiting Rev. Steve and Jeannie Schlissel and the saints at Messiah's Covenant Community Church .

The Bible takes it as a given that people wish to be wealthy and that there is nothing wrong with this. While there are certainly dangers inherent in the wish, the wish itself is never rebuked, except insofar as illicit means are used to fulfill it. Many people think that it is unspiritual to talk about money. But one of the things that I love about the Bible and have come to appreciate more and more over the years is that it is very down to earth. It’s very worldly, in the sense that it teaches us how to live in this world. And this is a good thing because this is where we live. We need to know the way to heaven, to be sure. But we also need to know how to live in this world while we’re here. And a very large part of living in this world has to do with money. Money is not regarded in Scripture as an intrinsic evil, as some people suppose. Someone will ask, “But doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Money is the root of all evil?’” Well, no it doesn’t, actually. It says, “The love of money is a

Both liberals and conservatives invoke God from time to time, claiming him as a patron of their respective causes. But which side is God on? The book of Ecclesiastes tells us:  "A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left" (10:2).

What do you think of Fred Phelps the Baptist minister from Topeka who goes around picketing funerals and protesting homosexuality? He’s a clown. Fred Phelps fancies himself something like a latter day prophet and one of only a handful of righteous people alive in the world today. But he is more like a megalomaniac than a prophet of God. He seems to believe that whatever happens to him and his Westboro Baptist Church is at the center of what God is doing in the world today. For instance, if you go to his website you’ll find a story that tells about how someone set off a homemade bomb in his daughter’s yard one night back in 1995. His daughter serves as the spokesman for the church. And she says in this article that this incident is why so many of our soldiers are being killed by homemade bombs in Iraq. She says, Every player in this disgraceful event [the homemade bomb set off in her yard; by the way, there was only minor damage and no one was hurt] will stand before God on the Jud