Pastor’s Blog
From the Pastor
My bees didn’t make it this year. Call it bad weather, bad luck, bad beekeeping, or maybe the vicious assault of neighboring mustached bees that were remarkably coordinated in their attack. Bottom line: We won’t have honey this year. Which is a bummer. To be honest, I didn’t get off to a good start. Well,…
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Dear friends, In the next few weeks, we will bid farewell to Freya Obermuller, who has lived with us as an exchange student since last August. Freya, from Hamburg, Germany, has become a wonderful addition to our family — our fourth child, it seems — leading Carter and Matt to call her Freya OberWoolly. She’ll…
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Dear friends, So how did THAT happen? Just four years ago, my son Carter joined an amazing class of St. John’s high school seniors in walking across the graduation stage. In the blink of an eye, many of those same “kids” will be walking across another stage. Others are already hard at work, and one…
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Dear friends, I am always amazed at the changing of the seasons. You think that after thirty plus years, it would be all too familiar for me, but, then again, winter gives way to spring and I stand in awe at what has just happened. The cold, death of winter gives way to new life.…
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Dear friends, I bet you and I disagree over gun control. In fact, I guarantee it. Whether you’re a gun rights advocate or a gun removal activist, there likely are nuances in your position that would cause me to disagree with you. The same is true with most topics of conversation, especially the controversial ones.…
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Dear friends, Krista and I watched the Grammy Awards last Sunday night, our annual opportunity to catch up on a contemporary music scene that is slowly slipping away from us. It’s always a fun event — loaded with amazing performances, emotional challenges, and over-thetop grandstanding. This Grammys went a bit overboard we thought, becoming more…
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Dear friends, When I turned on my iPhone Wednesday morning, I received news of NBC’s decision to fire popular Today Show host Matt Lauer after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced on Monday night. It’s the latest in what has become a rather aggressive, way-too-late, and altogether unrealistic, campaign to remove harassment and abuse from society,…
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Dear friends, Searching for a new pastor is a delicate process. Scanning the country to find that “right” person can take time and exhaust a lot of energy. It feels like a combination of dating, searching for a college, and taking the final exam for Marketing 101 … all wrapped into what we affectionately name…
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Dear friends, Thank God for weeds. The main thoroughfare into and away from our home is down a sidewalk that lies in the middle of our backyard, which these days is a lovely patch of, well, weeds. Clover mostly, but I’m sure Darrell Blackwelder would have a field day identifying the many other varieties we’ve…
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Dear friends, I’d like to share a few comments about our call process. As you may know, congregations need to exercise discretion when identifying and interviewing pastoral candidates. The process is often set in motion by the synod, which provides us with available candidates to interview. A congregation’s “call committee” takes it from there, sensitive…
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