Intersections

We are starting an adventure today, also known as my first preaching series! We will be taking a deep dive into the Gospel of John chapter 6 to see how food and faith intersect to bring us closer together as a community. I hope you came here today hungry for ice cream, but most importantly, JESUS! We will be checking out the first 21 verses for this first week. Here they are, in the Contemporary English Version:  “Jesus crossed Lake Galilee, which was also known as Lake Tiberias. A large crowd had seen him work miracles to heal the sick, and those people went with him. It was almost time for the Jewish festival of Passover, and Jesus went up on a mountain with his disciples and sat down. When Jesus saw the large crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where will we get enough food to feed all these people?” He said this to test Philip since he already knew what he was going to do. Philip answered, “Don’t you know that it would take almost a year’s wages just to buy only a littl...

       Wandering can be good for the soul. As Shakespeare once wrote, “ All that glitters is not gold .” Put another way by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings , “Not all who wander are lost.” Tolkien was describing a character running from his rightful place as king. He knew his destiny, but it carried such weight he was not ready to fulfill his calling.        In my life, I have been a wanderer. After being involved in church during high school and looking to get into leadership, I was too self-involved or did not want to submit to the great weight of the role that I felt led toward, feeling not worthy of the responsibility, much like Tolkien’s character, although obviously not to that degree. I dropped out of many things in my early twenties and was suffering from undiagnosed anxiety and depression. It took another decade and, unfortunately, much more pain for me, not to mention therapy and healing, to get me to the point where I am in fron...

     Experiencing a calling famously brings about the imagery of clouds opening and bright lights from the heavens proclaiming a change in someone’s life. As dramatic as that is, that was not my experience, and I’d like to think the overdramatic kind is more of an exception than the rule.     Well - let’s start with that - what IS a calling? You know, this was one of the hardest things to be able to narrow down. My research shows you how much of a nerd I am - defining a calling is so personal and unique that trying to have a generalized definition of it is like nailing jello to the wall.      But - in the interest of clarity, being called means that you are being set apart for a specific purpose; it can happen in any dimension of your life. For example, I knew I was called to marry my beautiful and kind wife, Tadjena. We were called to be parents to our two energetic children, Alison & Aaron. But a calling, most of the time, is for a hol...

Good morning, and thanks for coming today. You could have been anywhere in the world this morning, so it’s quite an honor to have your company. Once again, my name is Daniel Douglas, and I will be the new pastor at Bethany United Methodist Church in Fort Wayne starting on July 1st. Until then, it’s good that I get some practice.  I was born in south-central Wisconsin, and my parents brought me home to a town about the size of Garrett, a single-story ranch house. In front of that house, a couple of years before I was born, my dad planted two trees. You only know how much time passes if you can see the growth of objects you rarely see. My family and I moved out of that house six months later, but my uncle and aunt lived around the corner from that house, so when we would come back and visit, it’d be fun to see how much the trees had grown. As we grow, our perspective changes as well. The tree you thought was so giant as a kid doesn’t seem as big when you graduate high school. As time...

Merry Christmas! Jesus Christ is born! I hope the joy, hope, love, and peace of the season visited your home this week. Maybe you have the next week off until the New Year to relax. Hopefully, you haven’t taken down your tree yet. This is only the third day of Christmas - we have nine more to go! In my family, we keep the tree up until Epiphany - January 6th, just to enjoy the fullness of the season. After the celebrations this past week,  today might be kind of a letdown. You may also be surprised that it’s not one of the pastors giving the message today, but they have had quite a year, so hopefully, they can relax a little bit, too, knowing they didn't need to prepare for Sunday after a Thursday service.  The gospel message this week is also kind of a letdown - there are no shepherds, no wise men, no singing angels or stars to follow to a manger. But don't think that I have a light message for you! If advent has been about waiting, the preparations have paid off because the ...