While the coronavirus pandemic has for a while dramatically altered our customary ways of living, working and even being church, it also has the potential for being a great and needed tutor for us as a people, if we are willing to learn from it. I said in a recent...
I recently went backpacking with John Alexander for a night in the Linville Gorge. It just so happened that the night we picked to sleep outside was one of the few nights that the temperature fell into the mid-teens — a frosty night, indeed! John spent the night in a...
For our most up-to-date information, please see our coronavirus page. Dear FPC families: In line with guidance from Gov. Roy Cooper and recommendations from our Salem Presbytery, FPC is canceling all church-related events (including the Weekday Preschool Center and...
There is one day of the year that I always look forward to more than any other: opening day of baseball season. Every year at the end of the World Series in October, I go into extreme mourning, putting on my sackcloth and covering my head in ashes. Then I wait in...
I know many of you are in despair over the UNC Tar Heels basketball season. The emotional challenge is going from feeling like a winner to feeling like a loser. How do we deal with such feelings? How do we regain hope? How do we obey the Bruce Springsteen command...
Dear Friends at FPC, As a pastor I am often with parishioners at the best and worst seasons of their lives – days of happiness and celebration like births, baptisms, and weddings and days of sorrow like loss, illness, and death. I usually have been on the dispensing...
The work of our Pastor Nominating Committee continues. If you missed the committee’s update during worship this past Sunday, you can read it online here. Let’s keep the committee in our prayers as it continues narrowing its field of candidates. And if...
The summer before I was ordained and began my work here, I worked at Montreat Conference Center. Those summer months of 2019 became a time of holy rest for me as I prepared to enter the wilderness of full-time pastoral ministry. I spent my days teaching devotions to...
On Monday, Jan. 20, I had the opportunity to take eight Page High School students to the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast hosted by the Greensboro Human Relations Commission. We were joined by church member and state Rep. Ashton Clemmons. As we...
Between Christmas and Easter, we are no longer beside the manger anymore. Jesus is all grown up, and that night in Bethlehem has faded into memory. But we are not yet at the cross and the empty tomb either. Instead, we find ourselves following Jesus around in his...
