This is the first Sunday of Advent, the time of preparing for the celebration of God entering our world in human form in the newborn Jesus. The four candles on the Advent wreath represent Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, and we will explore those four themes this Advent season.

Hope is vital in a world where we don’t have nearly as much control over what will happen as we wish we did. Hope is a trust, a “hanging in there” in the face of disappointment. Hope is key to “getting” Christmas.

Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for December 1, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in worship at 10 AM this Sunday. We will celebrate Holy Communion.

Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce

Our Stewardship series, with the theme "Trusting God While Using What We Have," concludes this Sunday--where we not only dedicate our Giving Commitments in worship, but celebrate this week our Thanksgiving holiday. We give thanks this week--and it is not insignificant that the word thanksgiving implies that the way that we give thanks is BY giving.

Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for November 24, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in worship at 10 AM this Sunday--and at our church Family Thanksgiving meal at 5 PM later on Sunday. 

                                                              Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce

Our Stewardship series, with the theme "Trusting God While Using What We Have," continues this week. We are asked to be “All In With What You’ve Got”—giving fully of the gifts that God has given to each of us, which prayerfully are complemented by the gifts that others have (since no one individual has all of the gifts that the church needs).  

Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for November 17, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share 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"—with a reminder that even if we want life to be easy, “easy” still involves doing something.  

Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for November 10, 2019 for further thoughts, and plan to share in worship at 10 AM this Sunday. 

                                                              Grace and Peace, Pastor Bruce

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

How is God like singer/guitarist Bonnie Raitt?  Hint--it has to do with love.

Follow this link to the Pastor’s Ponderings for August 25, 2019 for further thoughts. See you in worship at 10 AM this Sunday.

                                                              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