Allen's Blog

What Do I Believe? I recently have had conversations with people who in a self-deterministic, take charge manner have declared what they believe about God, the state of the world and how they will live out their lives.   Each person is sincere and, for whatever reason, is fed up with ‘organized religion’.   Good questions are brought up: “How can there be only one way of salvation for everyone unless everyone has a chance to hear the same information?” “What about Hell?   How can a good God allow people to go or send people to a place of torment?”   GREAT QUESTIONS!   Usually what comes along with questions is an attitude of defiance and even arrogance.   Unfortunately, I rarely meet a true questioner.   People have already made up their minds and there’s nothing you can do to change it?   First observation:   We are always in danger of going down a wrong path when our philosophy begins with ME.   If I am the st...

What's New? Uber, Bitcoin, Tesla, Millennials, Dreamers, Drone, AI, Virtual Reality and dozens of other terms that we may have heard of but we may not know what they mean.  Or we may be very familiar with them but we think they really have nothing to do with us.  A missionary spoke to a group of us when I was in seminary and he told us, “As ministers of the gospel you should know a little bit about everything.”   He meant that in order to earn the right to be heard as preachers of the gospel, you need to demonstrate that you know something of the world of your hearers.  Karl Barth, a Swiss Reformed theologian said, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” I have always been interested in many things but this week I have stepped up my game a bit.  It’s not unusual on any given day to travel several 20 to 30 minute segments in my car.  The news on the radio leaves much to be desired so I’...

The Presbyterian Church has ten confessions which are essentially commentaries on the Bible.  I have been reading an article in Theology Matters by Richard Burnett who states, “Confessions arise as a result of a crisis in the church that requires a decision to be made.”  One of our Confessions is The Second Helvetic Confession .  Did you ever wonder what happened to the first?  I learned that there never was a confession called “First”, but the first confession in the 1500’s was The Heidelberg Confession .  This confession was considered by Lutherans to be too reformed in spirit and demanded that the writer be convicted of heresy.  Heinrich Bullinger wrote The Second Helvetic Confession in 1561 as a defense of the Heidelberg and it exonerated the author. Of course, confessions go back the creation of the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds .  These were written by the early church fathers in 2nd and 4th centuries respectively, to combat heretical ...

In a previous newsletter I told you about my friend from the Day School.  He and I hung out together most every Friday for just a half an hour.  We would do a work sheet, have a snack and tackle a project that I would come up with around the church: sharpening pencils in the pews, refilling the paper towel dispensers, helping the Deacons clean mulch beds and our favorite - looking for dead rodents in the crawl space under the church.   I had suggested to Mrs. B that he might benefit from spending time with me because I’ve done this before.  Nothing miraculous, just time together, listening, talking and working.  The Bible word for this is ‘discipleship’.  Nothing fancy, but evidently a little intentional time here and there can have lasting impact.  The picture above is a gift that my friend gave me.  The inscription says, “Thank you for helping me build my life” .   I’ve had a handful of notable moments in my life and this is ...

When That New Pastor Comes When that new pastor comes he( could be a ‘she’, but I will use ‘he’ for simplicity ) will ______________.   Much speculation goes into conversations about what a new shepherd will bring to our church.  For every person there is a different perspective on what he will do, how he will act, what he will bring, how old he will be, etc.  But what’s important?  How can the entire congregation unite behind their new leader?  There are sure-fire ways to discourage him immediately: “We’ve tried that before, it didn’t work before, it won’t work now.” “We don’t do that here.” “Let me tell you how things work here.” “We want to be like we used to be.” I was told years ago that a pastor should do two things when he first arrives: 1) Love the people and 2) Learn the history.  That second one is fraught with difficulty since history is subjective and the story of your church is no exception.  So, the congregation...

“I’m at my wit’s end!”  Did your mother ever say that to you?  Mine probably did.  “You’re impossible!” a teacher might say to an obstinate student.  “I give up!” is another response when faced with a difficult situation.  How we face seemingly impossible situations tells us a lot about our character.  Too often we limit ourselves to our own resources and humanly speaking, the task or even person before us is indeed impossible. Henry Blackaby reminds that faith in God is an adventure where we come to the end of ourselves and we begin with God.  In other words, true faith is exercised when we try to accomplish something that can only happen if God is behind it.  Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Now that sounds impossible. We are currently going through the Old Testament book of Exodus and are seeing how the Israelites and Moses face one impossible situation after another...

                                                                                                    Will a Newly Transformed Website Transform our Church?     We are very excited to bring our website (hebronpresbyterian.com) up to date.  It will have all the bells and whistles that you would expect and we can hope that it will be an effective evangelism tool.  It is true that people looking for a church do not use the Yellow Pages (remember them?) but they do a ‘Google search’.  And how we present ourselves on the Web influences their decision of whether to attend or not.     Some would say that the Web is the wave of the future.  We ...