During this Christmas season we become so excited about all the special parties, movies, songs, church services, and general celebration. We love hearing the Nativity story over and over again. At this point we might be able to repeat the story verbatim. I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on the ludicrousness of the story. Try to hear the story as if you had never heard it before. When we look at the story in this way we can see how God pulled out all the stops when orchestrating this world changing event. I imagine God truly reveled in creating one of the greatest paradoxes ever known. A virgin became pregnant… Crazy and strange things happen everyday in our world, but this take

My Bible is falling apart at the seams. So much so that the entire book of James fell out on the floor at Lima Estates during our recent Bible study. My Book is already held together with two types of duct tape, and several of the thin pages are also taped together with clear tape. I’ve got names of people I don’t even know written in the margins and on the pages of the concordance, reminders of prayer requests since fulfilled. I’ve got notes in pen, pencil and even marker – to the point I can’t even read anymore what some of the scripture says. It’s time to get a new Bible. After expressing this aloud to the women in my Thursday study – it was exclaimed that I couldn’t do that! I hav

Over the next year you will hear a lot about Sticky Faith and you might be wondering what it is all about. Sticky Faith is a term developed for youth ministry. It is based around the question, “What makes faith stick for teens once they leave the church and head off into the adult world?” The Fuller Youth Institute has spent the past decade researching what those things are. They compiled their findings into two books Sticky Faith and Growing Young. The research suggests that there are a few areas that have the greatest impact on the stickiness of faith. First, teens don’t just need financial and personnel resources to grow their faith. That means they don’t just need a large budget and lo