Archive for Bruce’s Blogs
Family Encourages Growth
I come from a long line of farmers and gardeners. My grandmother would save every seed from every tomato that she ate and start what would become a jungle of tomato plants every season. My dad has kept at least one major garden and sometimes even three at different locations around our community. I have [...]
Family Takes Care of Family
You have probably heard the phrase “Charity begins at home.” This Fathers Day weekend, I had an opportunity to see that in action. On the third Saturday of each month, we have the serve our community by distributing food to people who need it. This month, our whole family worked together to help set up [...]
Families Are an Example to the World
Throughout the long winter we have been dreaming about how we will get away from it all. Whether it’s kids dreaming about a two-month summer break or families planning a week or even a weekend away, we long for a change of pace. But with all the changes of summer, we find ourselves altering not [...]
Families Give Together
It is fairly easy to teach children to give, especially when we provide the gifts they give. First, there’s excitement when they receive the gift, usually followed by disappointment when they learn they can’t keep it. The excitement grows when they learn that the gift will help feed people; it grows when they learn they [...]
Families Teach Each Other
Our culture has trained us to be self-reliant. This becomes painfully obvious when other people begin to get involved in our personal lives; then we bristle. However, I was recently encouraged by several young men and women who said that they want to find some older men and women who would be willing to give [...]
Family Love Is Sacrificial Love
Forgive me, but one of my favorite memories of Easter is our family’s annual egg hunt. For me, the only thing better than searching for eggs was getting old enough to be allowed to hide the eggs. One of the most exciting things for me as a kid was to know that my parents, grandparents, [...]
God’s Family Shares His Comfort
As a parent, I can honestly say that there isn’t much higher praise than to be recognized when my kids say and do the right things. So, family, I want to thank you for reflecting your Father in heaven. From March 6 – 13, we hosted a group of students from His House at Central [...]
Restoring Family Roles Within the Church
While it’s clearly biblical to consider the whole body of believers within the church as our extended family, many times we seem to be missing a real sense of family roles within the church. Most times we are content to think of God as our Father and everyone else as our brother or sister. But [...]
The Family Is a Mission Field
I think it’s strange that so many people in the church, and not just this church, believe that “ministry” is what happens at church. Many also believe that only people who are called “ministers” are the ones who do “ministry.” That can’t be further from the truth. The “family” is probably one of the biggest [...]
The Church Family Works Together
I have traumatic childhood memories of Saturday-morning cleaning. It didn’t happen every week, but when Mom started playing Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn records (far more traumatic than the actual tasks of cleaning house), we knew it was time to work together. The church is a family, and family works together. It’s obvious that we [...]
The Church Is Family
Hebrews 2:11 tells us that “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” It’s very simple: the church is family. God is our Father; Jesus is our brother; and the Christians around us are our brothers [...]
Simple Gifts
Christmas is a gift-giving holiday. No news flash there. It makes sense; it’s part of the Christmas story. Matthew 2:11 tells us that the wise men presented Jesus with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. It’s also a key part of Christian theology; John 3:16 tells us that God gave us the [...]
Simple Life
Life, in general, moves at a breakneck speed, but in the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the new year, life becomes a blur. And in the midst of it all, we find ourselves thinking, “Why can’t life be simple?” Whether we realize it or not, the life we find in Christ is meant to be [...]
Simple Thanks
Our Sunday evening class on Nehemiah recently discussed Israel’s celebration of the “Feast of Ingathering,” which is something like our Thanksgiving, and the “Festival of Booths,” a reminder of when Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. In Leviticus 23:42, 43, God commanded the people to “Live in booths for seven days… so your [...]
Simple Change
As I mentioned in my report at the annual meeting, I am in the process of changing how I think about the church, not just this church but the whole idea of what the church is and how it operates. I mentioned that, for most of my life as a Christian, I’ve viewed the church [...]