Fairplain Presbyterian Church

Pastor’s Newsletter Articles

  • Helped By Those We Know, and Those We May Never Meet

    Ben Franklin said, “God helps those who help themselves,” but in my experience, God most often helps us through others, and others through us. We have all been helped along by people we have never met, and most of us have helped people we’ve never met. What a gift God gave us in each other!

  • Praying for and Imagining God’s Kin-dom

    If we all keep praying “Thy kingdom come,” I believe it will change the way we respond to our world so we respond instead of react. And I hope it will lead to us participating in God’s work of bringing God’s good road closer.

  • Looking Back on 2022 with Kindness and Gentleness

    I hope you can look back on your life in 2022 not only with a sense of “good riddance,” but also with kindness and gratitude for all the good God has given you, and with gratitude for God bringing you through all its challenges.

  • The 400 Not-So-Silent Years

    I don’t believe God is ever silent in our world, and our siblings in Christ from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have Bibles that do contain writings from the “400 silent years.”

  • Michigan Ballot Proposal 3 and the Presbyterian Church (USA)

    “When an individual woman faces the decision whether to terminate a pregnancy, the issue is intensely personal, and may manifest itself in ways that do not reflect public rhetoric, or do not fit neatly into medical, legal, or policy guidelines.

  • Remember the Sabbath

    During my freshman year of college, I read an interview with then-retired PC(USA) pastor Eugene Peterson where he talked about his practice of Sabbath. To this day I still remember the rule he and his wife used. He said, “We could do anything, but nothing that was necessary.”

  • The Sacred Ordinary

    Right before Kristen and I went into quarantine for covid, I had been out serving communion to folks at home and in care homes. When I got home that night, I put the broken bread and container of grape juice in the refrigerator.

  • How We Become Ourselves

    If we are formed by watching how other humans behave, how much more are we formed by our understanding of how God acts?

  • Can Christianity Adapt and Change?

    Last week someone said on the internet that religion cannot learn or grow because to be faithful to your religion, you must keep all your practices exactly as they were when the holy book was written. I don’t think that’s true at all, especially of Christianity.

  • When the End is a Beginning

    As we look at the cross and the ascension, when it seems like God is gone, like it’s all over… something unbelievable may be just about to get started.