Words of Welcome

Luke 11:1-13 I bring you greetings from the Disciples of Christ General Assembly held this past week in Fort Worth. While there weren’t 10,000 Disciples gathered in Fort Worth, there was probably close to 7,000 present. That’s a whole lot of people. The 10,000 Disciples comes from a call put out by our General Minister and President Sharon Watkins for 10,000 Disciples to pray for the church and its ministry. We who gathered in Fort Worth this past week did just that. We prayed and we sang, we listened and we shared in the Supper of the Lord. We brought gifts and we did business. We argued and debated, and yes, we prayed. Like every General Assembly there were issues that divided the body. Issues like the Iraq war. Although the resolution placing the church on record as opposing the Iraq War passed, the house was divided, and prayer was needed. Our moderator, Bill Lee, an African American pastor from Virginia, did just that, he called us to pray for healing in the body. He prayed that w

Luke 10:25-37 I grew up in small towns where we knew most of our neighbors, especially our neighbors with kids. Because everyone knew everyone else, our parents didn’t worry too much about us, as long as we let them know where we were going. We couldn’t get into too much trouble, because there was always a parent present to keep an eye on you and you knew that your Moms would talk to each other. But that was another time and another place, but it illustrates something about neighborliness – neighbors know each other and they watch out for each other. There is a flip side of this idyllic scene that illustrates the problem of not recognizing each other as neighbors. I read a story about a stabbing in a convenience store. A couple of thugs stabbed a woman to death, but no one stopped to help. A video store camera records customers stepping over the dying woman and one person even took a picture with a cell phone camera. Now that’s not very neighborly, is it? Every day we read about a neig