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| Service | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on6/24/2009 3:24 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day!
So, who says things slow down in the summer? You’d never prove it around here! So far this summer we’ve had Family Camping Fun, Pink Flamingo Flocking Season has begun and several of our kids have already had a great time at Camp Christian. Then of course there is the work going on around our building and grounds and the preparation for even more work late in the summer or early in the fall. And in mid July we will welcome Theatre Camp for kids of all ages and grades into our facility. We also will most likely be serving as overnight hosts for a group or two on their way mission trips on the gulf coast. Whew!
But in the midst of all this activity around and in our church, there are always opportunities to make sure we step away from our own place and space in search of what Jesus called the “others”…the widows and orphans, the dispossessed, the lonely, the elderly, the sick and those who simply need to know that someone car ... |  | |
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| | Sunday June 21, 2009 "Why Are You Afraid?" Mark 4: 35-41 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on6/23/2009 9:31 AM | |
| Several years ago Carol and I joined a group for whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River. I had been canoeing several times in my life, usually on some fairly sedate rivers, but I did have some experience with whitewater. But not a lot.
When we arrived at the drop off point, our guide got us all outfitted with life jackets, which I expected, and helmets, which I did not expect. Now, you have to understand to me, helmets mean that something bad can happen and it tends to heighten my fear response.
And that is what happened that day at the Ocoee River. The launch point emptied immediately into our first white water rapids, and as I looked at some of the friends with us, I could see the fear in their eyes that surely was in mine, too. The last thing the guide said to us was, “There is nothing to be afraid of.”
I remember thinking, “Really? Nothing to be afraid of? How about death or dismemberment?”
We arranged ourselve ... | | |
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| | Community | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on6/11/2009 1:09 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
Community is a wonderful thing. In fact, I think community is crucial to getting through this thing called life. I have known people who believed that they were “self made” but I really don’t think that is entirely possible, and if it is possible, I can’t imagine it feels very good. We need others to help us in the rough patches in our lives, we need others to share our joys and celebrate with, we need each other to balance out our weaknesses and our strengths, we need others to simply have someone to share the ride with.
I learned about community at an early age through the folks in my neighborhood and my church. I continue to revel in the fact that I am part of such a wonderful community as BCC.
Lately I have been thinking about a community that was once very important to me, and if truth be told, still is. I am from Detroit, and every Detroiter will tell you, if we don’t stick together, no one else ... | | |
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| | Sunday June 7, 2009 "How Can These Things Be?" John 3:1-17 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on6/8/2009 10:26 AM | |
| I have questions.
Lots of questions.
It seems to me that if we are truly paying attention, each new revelation of God’s presence and power almost necessarily leads to new questions. It’s not that I don’t believe, I absolutely do, but in my humanness and our culture’s emphasis on knowing and controlling, I have questions. Over the course of the next three weeks, some of those questions will come up; attempts will be made to answer some of those questions and some will be left dangling.
I don’t know what all your questions are. I don’t even have words for all the questions I have. But the first question that I have is: what does God think of our questions? Is God exasperated that we continually ask them? Is God amused at our attempts to understand the magnitude of all that God created and oversees? Does God honor our questions? Do our questions sound like skepticism to God?
This story of Nicodemus helps me deal wi ... | | |
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| | Catching Up | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on6/3/2009 2:30 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day!
A friend says that I’ve finally joined the 21st century. My niece says it doesn’t surprise her, since I have always been “hip”. (She’s in the will). Another friend wonders why I even bothered. It’s amazing the responses I get when people discover that a few weeks ago I signed up for “Facebook”. I had my concerns, too. I heard people talk about it as a way to keep people informed about what you are doing. I had to think twice about privacy issues. I thought that I could keep up with friends just fine without this new technology. But here’s the thing: I didn’t do a good job of keeping up with distant friends, so maybe I should give this a try.
I have discovered that everything I thought about was true.
It is a good way to keep people informed about what you are doing…although I am amazed at the number of people who seem to post things 4 and 5 times a day along the lines of “I’m just sitting here cont ... | | |
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| | A Godsend | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/28/2009 9:19 AM | |
| Greetings on this gray day,
Have you noticed that some of our renovations are already underway? Oh, not the big one in the sanctuary yet, although there are people hard at work to make that happen as soon as possible. But there were some other things on the renovation/refurbishing list that are currently underway or complete. These are the kinds of things that we can do internally without the need of contractors and sub-contractors. For instance, the drainage issue in the courtyard has been taken care of, and the water is rerouted in a better way. Attached to that is the building of a retaining wall that will shore things up in a really beautiful way. On the other side of the church new sidewalk now connects the storage area with the other entrances to the church. Also, the beginnings of a stone path to the back parking lot now starts at the end of that sidewalk. There is a new storage area in the courtyard for the CDC and for BCC. There is a new expanded closet in the choir ro ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 24, 2009 "Sharing the Power of God" John 17:6-19 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/28/2009 8:56 AM | |
| I grew up in a house my grandfather built in the 1930’s. The original venting system in the house was accessed into each room by metal grates that swung open to allow heat to enter, or could be pulled shut to close off the flow of heat into a room. In the upstairs of the house, where the bedrooms were, the grates were two sided with an opening on each side of a wall. In other words, two bedrooms side by side shared the same grate. This meant that if the grate was opened into one room, it would have to be closed into the adjoining room. This was fine for most of the year, but in the dead of winter, we learned to very carefully work the grates from both sides so that they could both be partially opened, allowing heat to flow into each room. This also meant that you could pretty clearly hear what was being said from one room to the next.
My brother and I shared a room that shared a grate with my parents bedroom. So, occasionally we could hear them talking, and I’m sure they hear ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 17, 2009 "Celebrating the Power of God" Psalm 98 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/18/2009 3:49 PM | |
| As we continue to move toward the amazing events of Pentecost, we resume our look at “The Power of God”. Last week we talked about recognizing the power of God, in ways big and small. Next week we will finish the series by exploring the issue of sharing the power of God. Today, we turn our attention to “Celebrating the Power of God.”
I have seen some great celebrations in my time, and I bet you have, too.
What celebrations stick out in your mind? For folks of my parents generation, V-E day and V-J day, those days celebrating the allied forces victories in Europe and Japan, seem to stand out. There are famous pictures of crowds dancing in the street, embracing and kissing, all because of the end of the hostilities in World War II.
I was privileged to find myself in the midst of an amazing celebration the night Pope John Paul II ascended to the papacy. There is a large Polish population in Detroit and the center of that population is a n ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 10, 2009 "Recognizing the Power of God" John 15: 1-8 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/12/2009 3:06 PM | |
| As we celebrate the continuation of Eastertide, the next three weeks we will undertake an exploration of something central to understanding God and our connection to God. For the next three weeks, we will focus on “The Power of God.” Today we will spend some time “Recognizing the Power of God”, next week we will turn our attention to “Celebrating the power of God” and finally, on the Sunday before Pentecost, we will delve into “Sharing the Power of God.”
Sometimes the power of God is seen as a liberating power, but other times, we fear that God’s power will be used to punish. At times, the power of God is so overwhelming as to leave us awestruck. At other times, the power of God is so subtle that we may even not make the connection that God is behind it. There are times when God’s power emboldens us to make a stand, and others when God’s power lets us know that it is okay to simply be, silent and passive.
All of us have seen the power of God. All of us have ... | | |
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| | Hospitality | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/7/2009 9:53 AM | |
| Greetings on this day that can’t make up its mind: will it storm or not?
It was great to take a break and go to New England for a week. We were able to see pretty much all of Carol’s family, some old friends from Boston, Carol’s oldest college friends and BCC member Brian Lovering. We covered Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine pretty well during the week, from woods, to the ocean shore to big cities. A nice time all the way around.
One of the really nice things that happened to us may seem quite simple, but it is was a simple act of kindness and hospitality that we don’t see very often. On Tuesday we went to get Carol’s dad, Ernie, who lives in a care facility in Carol’s hometown of Warwick. In fact, the house she grew up in is a mere couple hundred yards from the facility. We wanted to take Ernie to the shore for lunch and he said that he would like to go to the house. He just wanted to walk by and see what it looked like these days, and so we did. Inc ... | | |
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