Our Stewardship series continues for a third week with the theme "Trusting God While Using What We Have". In Exodus, God calls Moses to do more than Moses imagines he can do--and in bringing that about God uses what Moses has--using it in ways Moses couldn't have imagined. Can we imagine what God might make it possible for US to do?
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for October 27, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to be in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
Our Stewardship series continues this week, with the theme "Trusting God While Using What We Have". The Scripture from Matthew involves three people being entrusted with responsibilities which involve opportunities—and one seems NOT to trust. How about us?
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for October 20, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
This Sunday begins our Stewardship series, "Trusting God While Using What We Have". And this week we'll consider "what we have" as really being God's and not so much "mine". Which has some implications for how we use it.
How do we understand that? What do we do?
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for October 13, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
This Sunday is World Communion Sunday, which has been celebrated the first Sunday of October since the mid-20th century, nearly 80 years. As our United Methodist worship planning website states it, "this day calls the Church to be the universal, inclusive Church".
How do we understand that? What do we do?
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for October 6, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in Holy Communion at our fully open table at 10 AM worship this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
John Donne's 1624 publication asserts that "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main'. Which means, among other things, that none of us ought to see ourselves as completely cut off from the rest of the world--and that even pertains to what we have, and what we can give.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for September 29, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
Who are we in relation to God? How does God want us to understand—and live out—our relationship? Jesus—God made human—has some suggestions about this—not only about talking with God, but why we can talk with God in the way he suggests.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for September 22, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
If we watch TV game shows, we see it time and time again. Someone hurries to “ring in” to answer the question without hearing the whole question. Sometimes it works; more often it seems that it doesn’t. The answer is wrong because the full question hasn’t been listened to.
That seems to be something like what is happening with the sisters Martha and Mary in this passage from Luke. Mary is all about taking time to listen, and listen thoroughly.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for September 15, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
We remember Mr. Rogers as a remarkably caring individual with a real knack for working with children, which he demonstrated on his long-running TV show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”. We would do well to remember that “neighborhood” is a big piece of how Mr. Rogers teaches children—and by extension, adults—to see the world, and live in the world, and interact with others.
In doing that, he is following up on the insights of Jesus about that same thing.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for September 8, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
We've probably all heard the phrase "to know you is to love you". Is it possible that that is how God--who knows us better than we know ourselves--thinks of us? God knows us, and therefore loves us?
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for September 1, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday. All are welcome as we celebrate Holy Communion.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
The word “willing” in the sermon title “The Joy of Willing Justice” has two meanings. Both are significant for how we live out what the passages from Isaiah and Luke have God and Jesus saying to us.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for August 18, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
Pastor Bruce and Susan will be out of town on vacation this Sunday, but
McKnight will be blessed and honored by the preaching of Rev. Dr. Susan Moudry, who
is the Western Pennsylvania Coordinator of Clergy and Lay Excellence. Her sermon will
be “Impossible Possibilities, from Ezekiel 37:1-14, the classic “valley of dry bones”
passage—“Can these bones live?”
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for August 11, 2019 for further
thoughts on Susan and on “Impossible Possibilities”. Worship at 10 AM this Sunday.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
The Greek word for “body” is “soma”—we’re probably familiar with the word “psychosomatic” that describes how our mental health affects our physical body. “Soma”/Body is one of the images for the church that was used in the New Testament as the followers of Jesus gathered together
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for August 4, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday, where we will share in Holy Communion, the “Body of Christ”.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
“Koinonia” is another of the Greek words the New Testament uses that we can translate as “church”. It has several meanings, however, and they matter in how we understand what it means to “be” church.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for July 28, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
We find three predominant images for the church in the New Testament, the story of the church’s beginning. The next three weeks we’ll look at those, with this Sunday’s being the Greek word “ekklesia”—meaning in essence both “assembly” and “called out”.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for July 21, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus called 12 people to be "disciples". At the end of his time on earth, he instructed them to "go and make disciples". And in the book of Acts, we read about the growth of the church--and those who are a part of the church are called "disciples". Clearly this word is important!
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for July 14, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
This coming Sunday we will celebrate the merger of Millvale United Methodist Church into McKnight United Methodist Church. The joining together of these two congregations is sort of like the joining together of two lives in a marriage, and this worship service on Sunday will be sort of like the covenant expressed in a wedding. Holy Communion will be shared as we seal that covenant with the body and blood of Christ.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for July 7, 2019 for further thoughts. Come worship, celebrate, covenant, and commune at 10 AM this Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
The theme for Vacation Bible School (VBS) this week has been Athens--that fascinating, diverse, forward-looking first-century city where the Apostle Paul sought to spread the message of Jesus to people who had very open minds. Ar VBS, the children experienced food that would have been eaten then, and activities they would have engaged in then, and Paul helped them understand how the message of Jesus was experienced in a very different world.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for June 30, 2019 for further thoughts. Come worship at 10 AM this Sunday as we celebrate the week of Vacation Bible School!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
The emotional roller coaster is familiar to us. Just when it seems everything is going great, all of a sudden something horrible happens. We have felt that we are blessed; then the blessings evaporate in a second. How do we cope? How does our faith help when it seems like God is against us?
The experiences of the Old Testament prophet Elijah have some insights for us.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for June 23, 2019 for further thoughts. Come worship at 10 AM this Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce
The Christian faith understands God as a “Trinity”. We speak of God in three persons. Creator, redeemer, sustainer. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It’s kind of complicated. But what in our lives isn’t complicated? All of our relationships are—and individual people can at the same time be a parent, a son/daughter, a sibling, the same individual but in different relationships. Much as God is three “persons”.
Like I said, it’s complicated.
Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for June 16, 2019 for further thoughts. Come worship at 10 AM this Trinity Sunday!
Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce