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Dec, 01, 2009 0
Nine years ago, on my first Sunday at New Hope Church of the Nazarene, I was excited as I surveyed the "crowd" of 20 people attending that service. Except for my family of four, everyone was older than 55. Much has changed in these ensuing years. Our congregation's growth didn't happen overnight,…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Reading Jon Johnston's article set my mind to thinking about other persons who met great challenges and did not fold when the going got rough or the work grew dangerous. There was Nehemiah who might have ceased and desisted in his wall-building if he had listened to the threats hurled at him by his…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
The story of the work of the Church of the Nazarene among Armenians begins with the Armenian genocide. Between 1895 and 1915 an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred in Turkey with hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives. Many of those who fled found new homes in Syria, Lebanon, and…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
When our twin girls, Doren and Cariza, were first born, people would come up to us and more often than not ask the same question: "How do you cope with raising two at once?" At first, our pat answer was "We don't know." Now we say, "Only by the grace of God."
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Several years ago, a politician coined the term "compassionate conservatism." Many hundreds of years earlier, a missionary might have coined the phrase "loving holiness" when he penned the words we now know as 1 Corinthians 13. We know them well. We've heard them hundreds of times. The chapter is a…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
In John 1:48, Jesus meets Nathanael who is initially very skeptical of Jesus despite Philip’s endorsement. In their conversation, Jesus says to Nathanael, “I saw you while you were under the fig tree.” Even though we don’t know what Nathanael was actually doing or thinking under fig tree, Jesus…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
"Ships that pass in the night/ only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness," Longfellow wrote in his epic poem, Emma and Eginhard. He speaks of the minimal signals given to vessels on the ocean which pass each other in the blackness of night with "only a look and a voice/ then darkness…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
"Ships that pass in the night/ only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness," Longfellow wrote in his epic poem, Emma and Eginhard. He speaks of the minimal signals given to vessels on the ocean which pass each other in the blackness of night with "only a look and a voice/ then darkness…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Holiness and active participation in meeting the needs of others have always gone hand in hand. In the Old Testament, God called His people to be a source of healing and light to the nations: not just in doctrinal purity, but in service to those who were in need.
In the Levitical law, for…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
I was overcome with shock, grief, and uncertainty as I listened to our pastor of 17 years announce that he had accepted a call to another church. As I stole the occasional glance around the sanctuary, it looked as though the rest of the congregation had a similar reaction. After the service,…