Old Stone Presbyterian Church

The paper I mentioned: https://d2jt48ltdp5cjc.cloudfront.net/users/14192/uploads/081251de-971e-4102-9566-189b40d7b143.pdf

In our reboot of the Midweek Deep Dive, Jim Fischer, the music director at Old Stone, joins Pastor Adam to discuss the first week of Advent and to look into week 2.

If you’d like to learn more about the complicated issues of guardianship, feel free to look at this article in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights Also, I wrote a paper about how the church could engage this issue: shorturl.at/jpw67

THE POINT: Perspective Matters as we understand ourselves in the text. Different people have looked through the text to guess how many named people are in it 166-205 are women 1122-1386 total named people in the text So, our range of women represented in the Bible goes from 11.9% at worst to 18.2% at…

Our first semon from our 2019 bracket, exploring the book of Amos.

This week's deep dive explores the deeper issues around the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton, how it connects to human worth, and how Amos 5 also connects to human value.

THE POINT: Stories matter as they are part of ours and not part of ours. This morning I was reminding of a parable from the Talmud (Rabbi Lau-Lavie from On Being in 2017). There’s a ship that sailing, and it has many cabins. And one of the people in the cabins on the lower floor decides to dig a hole…

Just a couple important intro items: Place this in historical context: Ezra - Esther - Nehemiah Where the bookended books tell stories of what it is like to return home, Esther tells of the story of remaining. A spoiler reader There have been more than a few times in my life where I have admittedly taken…

Every week, we'll do a deep dive podcast as a way to connect last week and next week together.

The story of Paul’s conversion is particularly well-known to us, in part because we know how prolific Paul is. So much of the New Testament has his voice throughout. Saul/Paul was good at what he did. He seems zealous, determined, thoughtful, logical. He tells us as much throughout his letters. And he…

Frame the next few weeks Talked about the resurrection last week and how it’s easy to have it become a nice story, an idle tale. Even the disciples felt that way. But, maybe there’s something more to this story - something deeper to what we witness on this day. This is not something we can explain or…

I had a tougher time writing this sermon this week because I couldn’t stop thinking about this little fig tree. We don’t know much about it, except that it’s at least three years old, and barren. A barren fig tree in the middle of a vineyard seems like a pitiable character. But what good reason might…

“Christian Communities must learn how to work vigorously for the limited change that is possible, to mourn over persistent and seemingly ineradicable evils, and to celebrate the good whenever it happens.” - M. Volf This quote is helpful because it helps us to consider what it means to be reconciled to…

When I read these texts this week I feel a burden. I want a world like this. It’s a world reconciled, resurrected, brought to life in unexpected ways. It’s also just! There is giving and receiving, everything’s open handed. In a phrase, it’s the Kingdom of God - the idea of what the world looks like…