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| Reaching Out | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/28/2008 3:20 PM | |
| Greetings!
This seems to be the season of natural disasters. From China to Myanmar to Iowa to California we read of stories of destruction and devastation unimaginable. In fact, we don’t have to look too far away to find people who have been devastated by tornadoes and storms. Right here in Georgia people are rebuilding. As close as Cherokee County and downtown Atlanta there are folks still trying to get their lives back. It is a heartbreaking task for those who have lost all their possessions and perhaps family members and friends.
We sometimes feel helpless in the face of such devastating loss. We aren’t sure which way to turn or how we can make sense of it all. But in our helplessness, we can still do something.
One of the ways we can help as members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is to donate to the Week of Compassion, a ministry of the Christian Church that assists those in the wake of natural disasters and other ... |  | |
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| | Sunday May 25, 2008 "Changing Hearts" Acts 16:11-15 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/27/2008 8:22 AM | |
| All month long we have been concentrating on the Pentecost story in one way or another. The day we celebrate as Pentecost, the birthday of the church, conincides with the appearance of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. With that appearance, amazing things began to happen. The disciples suddenly began communicating in different languages, languages they did not know. And the important word here is communicating, because it was not just the ecstatic murmurings of people caught in the spell of the Holy Spirit, but real, true communication – communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had not heard.
Peter gave an amazing sermon that day, and 3000 people were said to have become followers of Christ right then and there.
The church was born that day, but like a newborn baby, many things had to fall into place so that it would be nurtured and grow strong and healthy. We know from the book of The Acts of the Apostles that those who initially were drawn to t ... | | |
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| | It's All About Attitude | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/21/2008 1:33 PM | |
| Greeetings on this gorgeous day!
I have been thinking a lot about attitude lately. Mainly because I find myself slipping into a bad attitude about some things. I have come to understand that much of the time, it is other people’s bad attitudes that lead to my bad attitude! And who knows what kind of impact my attitude has on the people around me. It is a vicious cycle and one that I would dearly love to break.
I look at our current political situation and realize that all the stuff that swirls around it is fostering much in the way of bad attitudes. Too often candidates do their best to criticize their opponents rather than telling us positive things about their own candidacy. Observers and pundits openly rage against candidates, but offer little, if anything in the way of positive alternatives. A lot of the time, they don’t even have a candidate they want to promote: they just want to stop someone else! This negative attitude does precious little to encou ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 18, 2008 "Changing Sides" Acts 9:1-19 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/20/2008 12:50 PM | |
| Preaching about Paul is a tricky business. It’s tricky because we don’t always know what to make of him.
Here’s the first thing: he’s got two names! First, he’s Saul, then he’s Paul. C’mon, Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul. Enough already! For our purposes today, let’s all remember that Saul is the name before the incident on the road to Damascus and Paul is the name after the incident on the road. But I’m going to call him Paul, all the time, because, well, I’m easily confused.
Here are some of the other tricky things about Paul:
His letters to the various churches carry some of the most beautiful messages of encouragement we can imagine. Some of our best loved and lyrical passages are attributed to Paul’s hand. His role of mentor to Timothy and champion of Philemon inspire us to reach out to, to be guides to others.
But then there is what I call the “hostile” P ... | | |
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| | Onward and Upward | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/14/2008 3:25 PM | |
| Greetings on this gray morning,
It amazes me that it is graduation time already. First, because it seems like we just got started on the school year! How can it already be time for end of the year final exams, proms, and graduations? Second, because it is hard for me to believe that so many of our young people are actually graduating! Let me make it clear: it’s not that I am surprised that they are graduating, rather, I’m surprised they are old enough to be graduating! It doesn’t seem possible, but the high school Seniors of 2008 were 11 or 12 years old when I arrived at BCC! I can only imagine how this graduation is hitting their parents!
But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Children growing up and maturing and striking out to find their way in the world. It is about parents feeling a little trepidation: are they prepared? Have they learned what they need to succeed at the next level? Are they ready for this? Am I ready for this? It is about th ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 11, 2008 "Changing Course" Acts 2:1-42 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/12/2008 10:35 AM | |
| I sometimes wonder why we don’t do more with Pentecost. What I mean by that is, why isn’t Pentecost a bigger holiday? The civic culture here in the United States, Christian and non-Christian alike, has come to accept Christmas and Easter as worthy of extended celebration. At Christmas, government offices even shut down and take it as a national holiday.
I do understand that the birth and the resurrection of our savior are big, big events: but why isn’t the birth of our savior’s church a big event? It is after all, the continuation of his ministry. It is the advent of what Jesus promised his disciples, the coming of the Holy Spirit to comfort, to empower, to guide. Isn’t what happened on that first Pentecost worthy of more?
Sure, we decorate the sanctuary and we wear red, but do we really grasp all that happened that day so many years ago? If we did, I think we would anticipate Pentecost much like we do Christmas and Easter.
Let’s st ... | | |
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| | A Well Deserved Sabbath | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/12/2008 10:34 AM | |
| Greetings!
One of the things that impressed me when I first arrived at BCC was their foresight and their understanding of what Sabbath truly means. Part of my “terms of call” to BCC was the fact that I was to receive a sabbatical every 5 years of service to the congregation. I discovered that our Associate, Jennifer Heinz, also has the same provision in her “terms of call”. It showed me immediately that the congregation wanted to do their best to help keep their ministerial staff fresh and motivated. For that is really what sabbatical is all about: a chance to step back, to alter your routine, to get a fresh perspective on what it is you are involved in, to prepare yourself for the next phase in ministry. My sabbatical last year did just that for me, and I think that it has paid off dividends not only for me, but for the new perspective I continue to bring to my duties.
Jennifer Heinz arrived at BCC more than a year before I did. First, she served as a semin ... | | |
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| | Thank You, Judy | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/6/2008 8:19 AM | |
| Today is the end of an era at BCC. Today is Judy Mowreys last day as our office manager/financial assistant. And, for me, it is a very sad day.
When I first came to Brookhaven some 6 and ½ years ago, Judy was among the first to meet me. She was, after all, on the search committee. I wondered about that at the time: how does a staff member get on the committee that picks her boss? I shouldnt have ever wondered, because soon after I arrived, I understood why it was not only a good thing that she was on the committee, but perhaps essential to making sure that the new minister would fit. Not because it was so important that the always delicate relationship between staff members be maintained, although that is very important. Not because it was so important that administrative world view of Judy and the new minister were in sync, although that is very important. Not because Judy represented a direct working connection to more ministers than anyone else in the church, alt ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 27, 2008 "Wrestling with God" Genesis 32:22-31 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/29/2008 4:25 AM | |
| At the very beginning of our service, we heard Crystal Evans read parts of the 46th Psalm to help us prepare our hearts for worship. It begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…” These have been words of great comfort to many, many generations of people of faith. They are also words that we sometimes have a hard time reconciling when our lives seem to have taken a turn for the worse, where anger or depression or fear or grief have overtaken us and God’s presence is hard to grasp.
When we are struggling with issues beyond our understanding, when the world seems to be spinning out of control, these are the times when we need to be assured that in fact, God will not leave us. But if we are truthful, those can be the times when we feel the most alone, the times when God does not seem near. And as much as we want to feel the loving touch of God with us, in our humanness, we cannot. The struggle within our own being can be tit ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 20, 2008 "Sacred Dreams" Genesis 28:10-22 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/21/2008 10:53 AM | |
| Scripture. Tradition. Experience.
These three are the hallmarks of our faith journey. Because in these three, God at work in the world is revealed to us. All are important, none can truly stand alone as God’s revelatory method, and none can be excluded if we are to truly understand how God is made known to us.
The scripture is the easiest one, and of course, it is the one that most Christian’s start with. We who are the legacy of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone sometimes refer to ourselves as “people of the book,” because the studying of scripture was paramount to their way of thinking. In scripture we are able to connect up God’s movement in and among the various stories, poems, and history that make up this amazing book that we call the Holy Bible. In scripture, we are able to see how others understood God and how others reacted to God’s presence in their lives. In scripture, we see roads that run parallel and perpendicular to our own lives and see ... | | |
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