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| Hospitality | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on10/27/2011 8:32 AM | |
| Greetings on the beautiful morning!
This past Sunday was, in some ways, a very special Sunday at BCC, and in other ways, it was a very normal Sunday.
To welcome Fred Craddock to our worship was a thrill and a blessing. I have heard him preach perhaps a dozen times, and never does he miss the mark or disappoint. It helped make our worship special. To welcome so many visitors was a real joy. Some of these visitors were old friends of BCC, some had connections with members of BCC, some were old friends of Dr. Craddock, some saw our sign and knew that this would be a special day. To celebrate with such a special reception following worship was a treat. It gave many people a chance to catch up, meet and greet Fred and Nettie Craddock, a chance to meet some new people, and a chance to simply be together.
All of these things – Dr. Craddock preaching, more than the usual number of visitors, a beautiful reception coordinated by Margie Kinney ... |  | |
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| | Struggling | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on10/20/2011 9:14 AM | |
| I have been struggling with something this week. And I am grateful for a couple of folks from the church who have told me that they are struggling with the same thing. There is, in fact, comfort in knowing that other people share our struggles.
Sunday evening, a terrible car crash on Buford Highway took the lives of two young men, brothers, aged 22 and 23. They were the sons of the minister to the Hispanic community at University Baptist Church on Dresden. I met the senior pastor there several years ago and he told me about his small, yet faithful congregation. They were moving a bit out of their comfort zone to invite their Hispanic neighbors into their fellowship, and it has been working. The parents of these two young men are obviously shaken to the core, as is the small close-knit community at University Baptist. My heart aches for the family and the church.
Yesterday, in talking with the church’s senior pastor, more of the story of the accident unfolde ... | | |
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| | Sunday October 16, 2011 "Encouraged and Encouraging" 1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on10/18/2011 9:27 AM | |
| Sometimes when we study the Bible we are struck by the beauty of short passages: “In the beginning was the word, and word was with God, and the word WAS God…” This simple sentence fragment sends shivers up my spine with the awe in inspires in me. Sometimes, it is a story that unfolds, maybe one of Jesus’ parables that catches are attention. For me, one of those is Jesus’ parable of the sower…sowing seeds on rocky soil, on sandy soil, on weed choked property, and on good soil. Not being a rural person, it makes me really think about what it is I am supposed to get from this passage.
And then there are things in our Bible that cannot be contained in a simple awe inspiring snippet, nor lessons that can be taught in a single story. Sometimes, we need to take a really long view of what is going on to truly understand the importance of something in the Bible. And the life of the Apostle Paul is one of those topics.
The Bible tells us that Paul was born Saul, who ... | | |
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| | Sunday October 1, 2011 "The Prophet's Good News" Isaiah 9:1-7 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on10/4/2011 3:23 PM | |
| Over the last two weeks, we have taken some time to look at the role and the goal of the prophets of our Hebrew heritage.
Ezekiel reminded us that God speaks in different ways to different people, that God’s word comforts in the midst of trying times, and that God is still speaking today, if we take the time to listen for the prophetic message.
Amos reminded us that even when things are going well – no, especially when things are going well in our lives – we must remember that our achievements are not ours alone, but are the result of God’s grace in our lives. Amos reminded us that if we continually live our lives as if God did not matter, eventually, we will remove ourselves so far from God, that we will have difficulty finding that divine presence. Amos reminded us that prophecies, after all, are more about how we act, and our willingness to change, than they are about God.
Enter Isaiah, who for Christians, is probably the most famous of all the Heb ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 25, 2011 "The Prophet's Goal" Amos 8: 4-12 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/26/2011 10:25 AM | |
| As we continue our series looking at the prophetic voices of the Hebrew Bible, we come to that point where the question must be asked: what is the goal of the prophet? Or maybe more accurately, what is God’s goal in putting prophets before the Hebrew people, and by extension, before us?
The answer is straightforward: the goal of the prophet is to affect change in the people. Change in their attitude, change in their behavior. Change that will lead them closer to God.
The prophet Amos is a great example of someone who was working toward that goal.
Last week we looked at the prophet Ezekiel who carried out his ministry during a time of extreme duress and stress for the Israelites. He was prophesying while the people were in exile in Babylon, and it was easy to see how the people would need guidance in the midst of terrible times.
The prophetic ministry of Amos is a different story. Most scholars believe that the b ... | | |
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| | Laughing Out Loud | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/21/2011 1:51 PM | |
| Is there anything better than laughter? Doctors are telling us that people who laugh regularly are more likely to be healthy, and there was even a study at Emory University Hospital trying to gauge the effects of laughter on the efficacy of cancer treatment. They showed comedies – broad, laugh out loud comedies – to folks who were enduring chemotherapy treatments. They compared these folks recovery with folks who had similar diagnoses but just read a book or listened to music during their treatment. The results seemed to show that there was indeed some therapeutic advantage to laughter…and even if some were skeptical of the results, the fact is that it a good laugh certainly couldn’t hurt!
I have worked in places where laughter was never heard, and I have worked in places where laughter bounced off the walls all day. And not only have the laughter-filled places been more enjoyable, I firmly believed those work places were more productive, too. When I think of the best times I have ... | | |
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| | Joy Abounds | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/19/2011 1:12 PM | |
| The headlines for the last few weeks and months have not been real uplifting or encouraging. Politics, the economy, confusion and uncertainty have dominated our psyche for too long now. I badly need a break from the disturbing news, and today, I got it.
Today I had lunch with some clergy colleagues from churches around the Brookhaven area. It was a nice lunch, a nice time of easy conversation. We talked about what was happening in our churches, shared some of our successes and our challenges, and basically, just did what colleagues do in this type of situation: enjoy each other’s company. There was no agenda, no dispensing of advice, no pronouncements of how we ought to do things. Rather, we just shared and commiserated and listened. It was simply friends enjoying each other’s company, putting the worries of the day behind us, knowing full well that they are not going anywhere. But for awhile, it was nice to do just that. I don’t need to tell you that situations like this are no ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 18, 2011 "The Prophet's Call" Ezekiel 2: 1-5 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/19/2011 1:07 PM | |
| Wouldn’t it be nice to have God speak to us directly and tell us what to do? Well, before you answer that question, think about the example of Ezekiel.
We don’t know a lot about Ezekiel: we know his father’s name was Buzi; we know that the name Ezekiel means “God strengthens”; we know that he was a priest, or at the very least, a priest in training. We know that he was deported to Babylonia as part of Nebuchednezzar’s “brain drain” of Judah, where the best and brightest were removed, thus making the region much too weak to be a force in political matters. We know that he was married, although we do not know his wife’s name.
We know nothing of any other family and we have no clue as to how he supported himself.
We also know that, to put it in strictly technical theological terms, he was one weird dude.
He is known for the series of oracles that he presented to the Judeans who were exiled in Babylonia. The oracles of doom tak ... | | |
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| | Fear and Faith | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/8/2011 7:40 AM | |
| When I was a kid, we had periodic “air raid” drills in the basement of Crary Elementary School. The alarm would go off and we would walk single file to the old basement which was a maze of rooms and sections, all with low hanging fabric wrapped pipes and ducts. It was kind of fun, actually. During one particular “air raid” drill, while standing in our appointed place in the basement, my friend Dennis Bennett turned to me and said, “So, we’re down here to practice what to do if someone attacks and bombs us, right?” I told him yes, that was what they told us. He paused and asked what seemed like a really good question, “Who’s going to attack us? Canada?”
We were, even in the midst of a “Cold War”, blissfully ignorant of the tensions in the world. We were the generation born after World War II but before Vietnam. World War II had been at the center of our parents world. When Vietnam became moved to the center of our world, we were older and better able to understand that this was a ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 4, 2011 "Working" Ecclesiastes 2:24 and Leviticus 23:3 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/6/2011 11:26 AM | |
| Well, there it is. In two short verses from the Hebrew Bible we have our work life laid out for us. First, work should be enjoyable, and second, we’re going to work 6 out of every 7 days. Well, I hope it’s enjoyable if we are going to do it on 85% of our days!
Labor Day celebrates our work. It is not a religious holiday, but there is importance in honoring those who work and setting aside, at least symbolically, a day of rest.
But how does all of this fit into our faith life? What does the Bible say about work?
Genesis 2 makes it clear that it was what we are destined to do and it is good. Genesis 3 on the other hand, says it is a curse handed down to humans because of the sinfulness of Adam and Eve.
Paul speaks at multiple points, most specifically Thessalonians, of working hard and not shirking our responsibility. He is clear that we work because God ordained it, and so it is expected of us. And if God expects it of us, ... | | |
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