Category: Newsletter

Every family celebrates Christmas a little differently. And every church does, too.

We’ll have Christmas-themed services at our church, as we do every year.  We’ll light the candles in the Advent wreath, sing the Christmas carols, read and study the accounts of Christ’s birth in the Scriptures, listen to the choir sing their special Christmas cantata, and see if the preacher can present the old, old Story in some new and attention-getting way. Other churches will celebrate Christmas differently, with more formality.

The word Christmas means literally “the Christ mass”.  It is the service at Christmastime in which liturgical churches celebrate The Eucharist, or what we call The Lord’s Supper. The word mass comes from the Latin word missa, which means “dismissal”. At the end of the service the priest would say “Ite, missa est” (or, “Go; it is the dismissal”). In time, that word came to mean the entire church service.Read More

Sometime during the summer or fall of 1994, while driving my family to the church I pastored in Brazil, Indiana, I saw a sign in front of a Southern Baptist church that read: “Come hear Dr. Moore tell about his trip to Russia!” It caught my eye because I’d been hearing about the phenomenal things happening in that country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian people had a wonderful openness to the Gospel and a hunger for spiritual things. I’d read a couple of books about this, but here was a man who’d actually been there. I told my wife, “I wish I could go hear that guy!” But since I worked on Sundays and rarely got one off, I dismissed the idea as wishful thinking.

A week or two later I saw a big article in the Terre Haute paper, interviewing this same man about his trip to Russia. His name was Dr. Alvis Moore, and he was the pastor of the church whose sign I’d seen. I devoured the article, and then a thought came into my mind: find this guy’s phone number and call him! So I looked in the phone book, found the church’s number, and called.Read More

I love words. I fell in love with words early, through the venerable medium of comic books. The pictures caught my eye, but the words told the story. In fact, the words made all the difference: the same picture could mean something entirely different, depending on the words (e.g., Lois could be saying, “Superman! Thank goodness you saved me!” or “Put me down, you big lug!”).

Words are powerful. Speech writers labor long and hard over just the right words. They know that saying something the right way can win your argument, while saying even the right thing in the wrong way can mean ruin. The right words have stirred men’s hearts and been remembered by history. The wrong words have cost elections, ruined careers and destroyed families. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”Read More

Vance Havner was an evangelist and Bible conference speaker, who was also sort of the “Will Rogers” of the evangelical world.  He died in 1986, but there are so many wonderful quotes from this old preacher still circulating. I think my favorite is this: “I’ve never heard a sermon where God didn’t speak to me…but I’ve had some very close calls!”

Most people think the word sermon is synonymous with boring. Too often their opinion is based on sad experience. It is a tragic thing when a preacher takes the world’s most amazing book – the Bible – and makes the world’s most wonderful truth – the Gospel of Jesus Christ – seem boring.

Sometimes it’s because the preacher doesn’t really preach from the Bible. I’ve always wondered how liberal preachers-those who do not believe the bible is God’s Word-can get up to preach, Sunday after Sunday. I mean, what do they have to say? They will usually read a portion of Scripture, but then embark on a series of remarks that have little or nothing to do with the text they just read.Read More

I used to have a book titled How to Spend an Hour in Prayer. I think it was by a man named Dick Eastman. Over the years I’ve lost the book, but I still have the notes to a lesson I wrote, based on that book. So I thought I’d pass on the gist of the lesson (and the book) to you.

Don’t be intimidated by the title. It doesn’t have to be an hour. Mr. Eastman pointed out that the clock-face was divided into 12 five-minute segments. (That’s on the old analog-style clocks…for you youngsters, clocks used to have faces, not just digital readouts.) A different way of praying was assigned to each segment. If praying for an hour makes you balk, try praying for 12 minutes, using a different way of praying for every minute. Or pray for 24 minutes, and change the way you pray every two minutes. You get the idea.Read More

The first time I tried to read the Bible was when I was a boy, probably in the first or second grade. My parents had a big black leather Bible they kept on our coffee table. I knew this book was important to my parents and grandparents, and to the preacher at our church, so I became curious to know what was inside it. I opened the front cover and began turning pages, trying to read here and there. I had no idea who King James was (the old rascal), or what King James English should sound like. After a few fruitless minutes trying to understand something of what I could read, I closed the Bible and put it back in its place on the coffee table. My initial exposure to God’s Word left me feeling that the Bible was a mysterious and difficult book.

The Bible is a mysterious and difficult Book. But it is also meant to be read and understood, at least in its main message. The fact is, when the Bible is translated into their native languages, the Story of the Bible can be understood by people all over the world.Read More

Occasionally I find something that is so good I just have to share it. Our former Associate Pastor Aaron Knapp forwarded this article to me with a note saying he thought I’d like it. He was right! I can’t say it any better, so I’m not going to even try. I hope you like it as much as I did.Read More

The Thursday after Easter we did something we’ve never done before, at least not since I’ve been here. Several of us set up a booth at the Senior Health Fair held right next door at the Armory, and we spent three hours meeting and talking with scores of people. It was a grand success, a lot of fun…and an awful lot like work!

The idea came from Dan Holtsclaw, Pastor of Switz City Baptist Church and the new representative for WQTY, the radio station that airs our Sunday morning broadcast. He came to see me and said that the radio station’s parent company was sponsoring a health fair next door, and wondered if we would like to set up a booth of our own there. He said, “It occurred to me that we’ll have all these booths for their physical health, but nothing for their spiritual health.” I told him I’d run it by our leadership and see what they said.Read More