The church! When you think of the church, what is it you think of? For some people, there is only one church. The one they were brought to as an infant, where they went to Sunday School and then on to youth group. The church where they were baptized, where they were married, and the…

For many of you, that opening scene is familiar and brings back memories of the 1980s and 90s.  It of course is the opening credits from the sitcom, Cheers. A while back, Angela and I cut the cable and have been relying on streaming services, and because we are fairly selective in our viewing, avoiding…

A Sunday school teacher was asking her class if anyone knew what the Tenth Commandment was, to which a little boy responded, “You must not take the covers off your neighbour’s wife.” Pretty close. Well, here we are—the last week of our series, A Return to Civility.  When we started the series in June, I…

Well, that was fun, and maybe a little bit convicting. I think that if we were honest today, we’d all agree that there is a feeling of violation that happens when we feel that we have been deceived. Most relationships can take almost anything except deceit. It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “I'm not upset…

Civility 5 A little change in direction here.  We started this series on the Ten Commandments, back in June and after the first four commandments, there’s about to be an abrupt turn.  Last week, knowing that this week was going to be one of our three family Sundays this summer, I spoke on Commandment #…

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six-year-olds. After explaining the commandment to "honour thy father and thy mother," she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat, one little boy (the eldest child of a family) answered,…

What a crazy world we live in today. Do you ever feel like the Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”? You know the one, he’s always rushing this way and that looking at his watch and muttering, “I’m late, I’m late”. It seems that every hour of every day is filled to the limit with things…

Recently I was reading an article written by a friend of mine, Mike McNeil. Mike and I are from the same home church, and he taught at Kingswood University for forty years before taking a teaching position with Kings Church in Saint John. Mike writes a column called Soul Apologetics, and this week the article…

A couple of weeks ago we began our series “A Return to Civility” and I mentioned how earlier this year I had speculated on what I saw as a loss of civility in our society. We’ve come to a place where we can no longer agree to disagree, and we’ve stopped treating one another with…

Earlier this year I was struck by how uncivil our society has become. I can’t remember if it was a personal encounter with someone or something I saw on the news or read on social media. But I do remember thinking: Why can’t we just be civil to each other, what can’t we just be…