Pastor's Corner

The fourth Servant Song in Isaiah (Is. 52:13-53:12) is often read or preached from during the Passion Week, and understandably so. Isaiah penned this poem 700 years before Christ's death. Yet his depiction of the experience and essence of the cross pulsates with New Testament Gospel clarity. Since the Middle Ages, most Jews interpret The Servant as a reference to the nati...

Terrorist group Boko Haran pursuing Christian genocide in Nigeria. ISIS terrorists threatening to kill children unless their fathers renounce faith in Jesus. Gunmen firing at a bus carrying Coptic Christians in Egypt. Violent hatred against believers is rampant in many parts of the world. We must pray for the persecuted church. But what about the bad guys? There is a type...

If you do battle with feelings of gloom and thoughts of hopelessness you are not alone. The Bible tells many a story about God's children getting stuck in the Slough of Despond, to borrow a phrase from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. We see Elijah sitting under the broom-tree begging God to take his life (1 Kings 19:4). We hear David's painful words: "I am utterly bowed ...

Yesterday afternoon I returned from a men's retreat at Camp Berea in New Hampshire. Sixty-five men from nine area churches came together for two days of teaching, fellowship, prayer and worship. Here are five things I took home with me. The Bible is still loved. It was encouraging to be in a place where God's Word was taught unapologetically. The call to obedience sounded...

"All the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him" I must have read this sentence countless times. It's found in Luke 15 where Jesus tells three stories: the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. Every story make the same point, that Jesus came to seek and save sinners. But what struck me this time was the first sentence of this well-k...