Deus Misereatur

The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking that Divides Us by Karl Vaters My rating: 5 of 5 stars How do you perceive your small church? Do you see it's smallness as a problem to be fixed? Or is it possible that it is small by God's own design and in his delight? Karl Vaters, Teaching Pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California, tackles these questions and many, many more in his heart-lifting 212 page paperback, "The Grasshopper Myth". The book's appellation comes from Numbers 13 when the twelve spies returned from reconnoitering the Promised Land, and ten of them recounted how tall and big everyone and everything was, and then exclaimed, "and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (13.33). Viola! The Grasshopper Myth! Without being jaundiced or jaded, Vaters challenges our self-imposed expectations that gut many a minister, and asks all of the "wrong" qu...

A Sometimes Stumbling Life: Making Sense of Our Struggles and God's Grace in the Journey of Faith by Mike Khandjian My rating: 5 of 5 stars Eugene Peterson pictured the Christian life using a phrase from Nietzsche, "The Long Obedience in the Same Direction," which gets a good handle on an important aspect of being a disciple of Jesus. Mike Khandjian, Senior Pastor of Chapelgate Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Baltimore, Maryland, does something similar with the title of his new 212 page paperback, "A Sometimes Stumbling Life: Making Sense of Our Struggles and God's Grace in the Journey of Faith". The title gives out the main thrust of book. The eleven chapters are packed with stories from Sacred Scripture and real life. They follow a flow from the first steps to the final sojourn, examining and illustrating the often forward stumble of Christians. Each chapter takes up and wobbles it's way through fears, fixations or failures and arrives at a hope-filled...

Creator God who in the beginning made all things of nothing by the power of your word, and all very good; whose Spirit hovered over all that was formless and void to bring forth order and life. We pray for your Spirit to hover over us; and we pray that your Spirit would continue to cause the earth to bring forth fruit bountifully. We pray: Come, Holy Spirit! Revealing God, who assigned prophets, judges, and Psalmists – like Moses, Deborah, David and Isaiah – to bring forth your decrees, directions and adulations, and clothed them with your Spirit who guided them and testified through them of the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories; cloth us with your Spirit that we may bravely serve you and our neighbors in love and truth. We pray: Come, Holy Spirit! Holy God who sent your Son Jesus Christ into the world that through him we might have life; and after his death, burial, resurrection and ascension, you sent forth your Holy Spirit by your Son, so that we would no...