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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? |
| Called to Serve | |
| By Brad Miller on5/3/2012 8:45 AM | |
| One of our priorities as a congregation as we moved into 2012 was to expand our Community Service and Outreach activities. We who have been blessed with so much are called to do what we can to help those in need. Sometimes those needs are spiritual; sometimes they are physical. Some people need advocates; some people need friends. We cannot be all things to all people, but we can help.
To that end, there are four opportunities in front of us that all fall into the category of community service that I would like you to be aware of.
FLOWERS FOR MOTHERS : Friday May 11, 10:00 am until noon the BCC Garden Club will host a “PAINT YOUR POT AND PLANT YOUR FLOWER” activity for the Child Development Center. Each child will paint a pot and then plant a blooming flower for their mother. This will be the third year we have hosted this event. It is always messy and lots of fun. All children of the church are invited to participate along with the CDC. Addition ... |  | |
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| | Remembering Mike Holloway | |
| By Brad Miller on4/25/2012 2:29 PM | |
| | On Monday I found out that a friend of mine had died. His name was Mike Holloway and the fact is, I did not know him well, but when I learned of his death I was affected more than I would have expected. You see, Mike was a person I met here at the church. About 2 ½ years ago he came to the door, recently released from prison, working hard to get back on his feet. I never knew the whole story, but there was something in Mike that made me believe he really was trying. That first day he just said he needed a place to pray, and so I turned on the lights and he went into the sanctuary for about an hour. When he went in, the fear and stress on his face was palpable, when he came out, he looked relaxed and ready to take on the day again. We talked some that day, but he didn’t ask for anything other than a prayer on his behalf. Over the next couple of years I was able to help him occasionally with a Marta card or a small bit of money to get groceries. But mostly, he just stopped by to talk, to pray, to ... | | |
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| | Building Community | |
| By Brad Miller on4/12/2012 7:55 AM | |
| What a wonderful day Easter Sunday was! A chance to gather together and celebrate the most incredible event in all of history. A chance to give thanks for the grace that God has extended to each of us through Jesus Christ. A chance to share all of it within this wonderful community of faith. A chance to commit to making sure that Easter is not just a day, but a way of life. And the big question is, how do we do that?
At the beginning of the year, BCC identified priorities for 2012 and one of those priorities was to strengthen our already strong commitment to Community Service. We identified the community as both the BCC community and the community outside the church. We have already strengthened our relationship with the Interfaith Outreach Home and Campbell Stone Christian Centers, and we are working toward a new partnership with an organization called “Street Grace”, about which you will hear more about soon. We also want to strengthen our “inreach” to the members of this cong ... | | |
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| | Spreading the News | |
| By Brad Miller on4/4/2012 3:01 PM | |
| Well, apparently no one I know won the Mega Millions last week. Watching the news reports of the events leading up to the drawing, and now the mystery that surrounds the winning tickets, I had the feeling that this was the biggest news event of the year, maybe the decade! I mentioned that to a friend and he said, “Oh, it’s just the media machine ratcheting things way out of proportion.” I thought about that awhile, and decided that he was probably right. And then I started thinking about the big event we celebrate this weekend: the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. Now, as big stories go, this is probably the biggest. The thought suddenly popped into my head: “What would it have been like if today’s mass media had been on the scene of Jesus’ resurrection?”
It’s sort of an interesting question, isn’t it? Would the media have staked out the Disciples houses to get a glimpse and maybe a quote? Would Mary Magdalene have become an instant celebrity? And what of the others who were ... | | |
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| | Dreaming | |
| By Brad Miller on3/29/2012 8:38 AM | |
| | The Mega-Millions Jackpot for Friday night is $500 million. That is one-half a BILLION dollars! I can barely get my head around that number. But it doesn’t stop me from dreaming. What you do with $500 million dollars? Well, first of all after taxes and in a single cash pay out, it would probably be much lower…like $250 million. (Oh, forget it – like I could live on that!) I bet most of us have taken some time to dream about what we could do if we won the lottery. Pay off your house? Pay off all your family members houses? Pay off the church mortgage? Donate to lots of worthy causes? Make sure your children’s education is fully funded? Travel? Retire? Buy a small country? Start a new business? The possibilities they say, are endless, and there is nothing wrong with dreaming. The week I joined the faculty at Northeastern University in Boston, the lottery jackpot was one of the highest ever. The chairman of the department took me and the other new faculty member out to lunch one day to welcome ... | | |
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| | Stuggling with Scripture | |
| By Brad Miller on3/21/2012 1:58 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful spring day,
I have been reading a lot of Psalms lately. Some of it has been for a class that I have been facilitating, some has been for possible future sermons and studies, but mostly, I have been reading the Psalms for me. Tradition says that the bulk of the Psalms were written by King David. Not all scholars believe he wrote all of them, but his hand can certainly be seen. The Psalms are prayers that were probably used in worship – maybe as a reading, a litany, a pastoral prayer, or a song to be sung – but there are still several Psalms that clearly come out of a personal need or angst or celebration. They are a good place to go to remember that even folks like King David had their days of fear, and guilt. I am taken by the fact that David, too, experienced times when he could not feel God’s presence, and I am buoyed that he never gave up believing or seeking for that presence to be made known. It helps me to understand that if God seems distant it ma ... | | |
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| | Stop | |
| By Brad Miller on3/7/2012 12:44 PM | |
| | Today as I pulled into the parking lot at church, I was about to get out of the car and begin my work day when I noticed a young mother and her toddler daughter admiring the flowers and plants in front of the church. The toddler was in the mother’s arms and as she slowly walked in front of the flower beds, she would crouch down. When the mother got low enough, the child would reach out and ever so gently touch the flower they were focused on. Then, she would suddenly look up at her mother with a look of awe and wonder that we adults don’t exhibit often enough. I sat for a full 10 minutes, feeling a bit like a voyeur, but entranced by the slow, methodical, caring way the mother crouched at various plants and shrubs. Then, with every gentle touch, the little girl would look up at her mother with a great smile and a look of surprised joy, as if this particular flower was the first one she had ever seen or touched. I couldn’t tell what they were saying to each other, if anything, but it didn’t matter. The ... | | |
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| | Service and Sharing | |
| By Brad Miller on2/29/2012 12:39 PM | |
| One of the things that we are focusing on as a congregation this year is the idea of service. Oh, this idea is nothing new to folks at BCC as you were reminded if you were at our last Praise on Peachtree worship service. But it is something we can always do more and better. And so, this year, we are working on a plan to reach out as a church more; provide opportunities for individuals and families to serve others in God’s name and basically make “service” another form of worship.
This past Saturday about 15 folks turned up at Campbell Stone to visit with friends, old and new, to share some laughter, to share some fun playing Bingo, to share some ice cream, and most importantly, whether we recognized it or not, to share God’s love. In that time of sharing we witnessed a 103 year old interact with a 5 year old. I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years. We met some folks who have been residents for years, and some that just moved into Campbell Stone and are still sor ... | | |
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| | Lent | |
| By Brad Miller on2/22/2012 4:15 AM | |
| As hard as it is to believe, Lent is upon us once again.
Every year we spend time in prayerful introspection in an attempt to understand how we can be the people God would have us be. Some of us will think about giving something up as a way to be reminded that in our longing, God is always there, and to become more disciplined in our daily living. Like New Year’s Resolutions, Lenten sacrifices are usually about the same every year: give up alcohol, give up chocolate, give up red meat. There is nothing wrong with any sacrifice that helps us be more disciplined, but this year, a friend has challenged me with a question that is one that I would like to share with all of you: “What will make this Lenten season different?”
It is a convicting question, and one that each of us must deal with in our own way. That is the beauty of Lent, all of us on a journey together, yet each of us working on our own issues. The support of the community is important, but ultimately, it w ... | | |
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| | Unsettled | |
| By Brad Miller on2/15/2012 3:21 PM | |
| | I have been looking at starting a new devotional regimen and have been looking at several different books over the last few weeks. This morning I was looking at one that I was unsure of going into it. It is one that someone gave me a while back and as I paged through it, it seemed like it was aimed at women, specifically women who are struggling with weight loss, so I set it aside at the time. But even though it seems to be aimed at women, I also know the experience of struggling with my weight. And so, this morning, I picked it up and began to read. It is called “Made to Crave Devotionals”. On the first page, the author, Lysa TeurKeurst, lamented her lack of ability to carry out a new year’s resolutions. But that all changed one year. That year, she did not resolve the “normal” things that get resolved every year. Instead, this is what her prayer for the start of the new year was: “Lord, Unsettle me. Unsettle me in the best kind of way. For when I allow your touch to reach the deepest parts of me ... | | |
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