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Mid-Week Missive |
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| Author: | Brad Miller | Created: | 10/30/2007 2:52 AM |  | | What is happening at BCC? |
| God of Wonder | |
| By Brad Miller on7/22/2009 3:21 PM | |
| Greetings on this grey morning,
One of the things that seems to fade as we get older is our sense of wonder. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe we have seen too much, understand too much, become too logical, too cynical. Whatever it is, we just seem to not be as surprised or delighted by things like we did when we were younger. Or maybe it’s because we don’t take the time to be in awe of the amazing things that go on around us.
I am willing to bet that for anyone around my age or older, we did share an awe inspiring moment of wonder on July 20, 1969. On that day, 40 years ago Monday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two humans on the moon. Very late on that day, they emerged from inside their space capsule and walked on the surface of the moon. I can still remember the day vividly, and I can still remember my feeling of absolute wonder and awe at the scratchy scenes that were unfolding on our black and white television set. After years of study a ... |  | |
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| | Do No Harm | |
| By Brad Miller on7/15/2009 12:01 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful summer day!
It’s funny how things pop up at just the moment you need them. Yesterday afternoon I broke my rule about listening to talk radio and was bombarded by caustic comments, subtle and not so subtle putdowns, outright questioning of someone’s patriotism and an absolutely obnoxious discussion/rant/argument about the merits of different college football conferences. And I didn’t have the radio on for more than about 5 minutes! I know, I know, it gets me every time! I should know better, and I have promised myself it will be a long, long time before I fall into this trap again.
This morning, I picked up a book off my desk that had been sitting there about a week. It was a little book that I picked up on sale at the Christian bookstore because the title intrigued me: “Three Simple Rules”. It was written by a minister who had done some research on the 18th century theologian John Wesley and found embedded in his theology what he ... | | |
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| | Spreading the Good News | |
| By Brad Miller on7/9/2009 3:00 PM | |
| Greetings!
For those of you who were not in worship this past Sunday, you might not have heard that our partners in the International Christian Church will be leaving us near the end of summer. They have found some property north of Atlanta nearer to a larger Cambodian community and have decided that they need to strike out to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to that population. I cannot express how sad I am to see them go, but neither can I hide my pride and joy at their decision. They are doing what we are all called to do: move into the world and be witnesses of the grace of God.
We have much to learn from our ICC brothers and sisters: perseverance in overcoming the most dire of situations; faith in the face of great adversity; the ability to continually trust to God’s grace and keep moving forward; the joy that comes from finding peace in the community of faith; the desire to serve others, first, last and always. We may have helped them with a place t ... | | |
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| | Service | |
| By Brad Miller on6/24/2009 3:24 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day!
So, who says things slow down in the summer? You’d never prove it around here! So far this summer we’ve had Family Camping Fun, Pink Flamingo Flocking Season has begun and several of our kids have already had a great time at Camp Christian. Then of course there is the work going on around our building and grounds and the preparation for even more work late in the summer or early in the fall. And in mid July we will welcome Theatre Camp for kids of all ages and grades into our facility. We also will most likely be serving as overnight hosts for a group or two on their way mission trips on the gulf coast. Whew!
But in the midst of all this activity around and in our church, there are always opportunities to make sure we step away from our own place and space in search of what Jesus called the “others”…the widows and orphans, the dispossessed, the lonely, the elderly, the sick and those who simply need to know that someone car ... | | |
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| | Community | |
| By Brad Miller on6/11/2009 1:09 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
Community is a wonderful thing. In fact, I think community is crucial to getting through this thing called life. I have known people who believed that they were “self made” but I really don’t think that is entirely possible, and if it is possible, I can’t imagine it feels very good. We need others to help us in the rough patches in our lives, we need others to share our joys and celebrate with, we need each other to balance out our weaknesses and our strengths, we need others to simply have someone to share the ride with.
I learned about community at an early age through the folks in my neighborhood and my church. I continue to revel in the fact that I am part of such a wonderful community as BCC.
Lately I have been thinking about a community that was once very important to me, and if truth be told, still is. I am from Detroit, and every Detroiter will tell you, if we don’t stick together, no one else ... | | |
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| | Catching Up | |
| By Brad Miller on6/3/2009 2:30 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day!
A friend says that I’ve finally joined the 21st century. My niece says it doesn’t surprise her, since I have always been “hip”. (She’s in the will). Another friend wonders why I even bothered. It’s amazing the responses I get when people discover that a few weeks ago I signed up for “Facebook”. I had my concerns, too. I heard people talk about it as a way to keep people informed about what you are doing. I had to think twice about privacy issues. I thought that I could keep up with friends just fine without this new technology. But here’s the thing: I didn’t do a good job of keeping up with distant friends, so maybe I should give this a try.
I have discovered that everything I thought about was true.
It is a good way to keep people informed about what you are doing…although I am amazed at the number of people who seem to post things 4 and 5 times a day along the lines of “I’m just sitting here cont ... | | |
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| | A Godsend | |
| By Brad Miller on5/28/2009 9:19 AM | |
| Greetings on this gray day,
Have you noticed that some of our renovations are already underway? Oh, not the big one in the sanctuary yet, although there are people hard at work to make that happen as soon as possible. But there were some other things on the renovation/refurbishing list that are currently underway or complete. These are the kinds of things that we can do internally without the need of contractors and sub-contractors. For instance, the drainage issue in the courtyard has been taken care of, and the water is rerouted in a better way. Attached to that is the building of a retaining wall that will shore things up in a really beautiful way. On the other side of the church new sidewalk now connects the storage area with the other entrances to the church. Also, the beginnings of a stone path to the back parking lot now starts at the end of that sidewalk. There is a new storage area in the courtyard for the CDC and for BCC. There is a new expanded closet in the choir ro ... | | |
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| | Hospitality | |
| By Brad Miller on5/7/2009 9:53 AM | |
| Greetings on this day that can’t make up its mind: will it storm or not?
It was great to take a break and go to New England for a week. We were able to see pretty much all of Carol’s family, some old friends from Boston, Carol’s oldest college friends and BCC member Brian Lovering. We covered Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine pretty well during the week, from woods, to the ocean shore to big cities. A nice time all the way around.
One of the really nice things that happened to us may seem quite simple, but it is was a simple act of kindness and hospitality that we don’t see very often. On Tuesday we went to get Carol’s dad, Ernie, who lives in a care facility in Carol’s hometown of Warwick. In fact, the house she grew up in is a mere couple hundred yards from the facility. We wanted to take Ernie to the shore for lunch and he said that he would like to go to the house. He just wanted to walk by and see what it looked like these days, and so we did. Inc ... | | |
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True Community | |
| By Brad Miller on4/21/2009 9:59 AM | |
| Greetings,
Normally, I would send this out tomorrow, but I just got off the phone with a man I have never met before, and probably never will. Yet, this man and his wife have touched me so profoundly this morning that I needed to share it with you. The whole scenario speaks to the mysterious power of God’s presence, the strength that we gather as members of a faith community and the absolute unknowable boundaries of that community.
As I mentioned on Sunday, Andrea Chambers, a member of BCC who moved to Texas about a year and a half ago, called me this past weekend. Things have been going well. She is engaged to a soldier named Mike, who is presently serving his second tour of duty in Iraq. She was 7 months pregnant when she went to the doctors for a test to let her know the gender of the baby. She was told there was no heart beat; the baby had died. For medical reasons, she needed to carry the baby another week and her delivery by c-section is scheduled for ... | | |
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| | After Easter | |
| By Brad Miller on4/15/2009 3:25 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful spring day!
Easter is such a wonderful time, but it can also be one of great stress, too. Not only for the preacher who wants to find a new way to tell a story that everyone already knows, or the choir director who wants to have the best possible anthem on that special day, or the person who gives the children’s sermon who wants to wow the kids on the biggest day of the church calendar. No, it can be stressful to the person who after witnessing all the passion and joy of the resurrection, gets up on Monday morning and realizes that their life has not changed a bit. If Easter happened, why am I not in a better place,or in a better mood, or why haven’t I solved my problems? Year after year, Easter comes and goes and we celebrate. But what of the person who witnesses the perfect love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, and still finds themselves mired in a decidedly un-perfect world?
Well, it may just be that that is why the worshipping ... | | |
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