Sermon preached originally in Spanish for Dominican Mother’s Day in the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana de San Rafael 5/29/2011 Text: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 How many of you wake up to the sound of rooster crowing? In my country we don’t have roosters in the city so we wake up to the scream of an alarm clock. But when I was a boy I didn’t have a rooster or alarm clock since my mother woke up up every morning. She always began... Read more
This is not a real blog entry. I just wanted to post a link to our Dominican Republic mission team video for archival purposes. It’s an awesome video. You should watch it! It was put together by Kim and Damon Bland, the United Methodist Volunteers in Mission coordinators in the Dominican Republic. If you’re related to a church that’s looking to start an overseas mission relationship, you should consider the Dominican Republic. Read more
Okay I recognize that most people who would read my blog wouldn’t have any reason to know or care who Marc Carpenter is. I didn’t know or care who he was until yesterday when some chatter on facebook led me to this post on Billy Birch’s Arminian website. For those of you who were blissfully unaware, in the Christian blogosphere, there’s a group of fierce theological piranhas known as the hyper-Calvinists. If you don’t know what Calvinism is, in a nutshell,... Read more
I got an email today from the Virginia Methodist state listserv that let me know there’s going to be a resolution at our Methodist Annual Conference this year regarding the question of homosexual clergy (in my first year as a voting member — GULP!). The email cast its opposition to unbanning homosexual clergy according to the framework of the United Methodist constitution. Our United Methodist Book of Discipline says that the 25 Articles of Religion agreed upon by our forebears... Read more
Viridiana Martinez shared the following photo on her facebook page this past weekend: If the bottom text is too fuzzy for you to read, the whole billboard says, “We follow Christ, so it’s basically a win/win for you to follow us.” The arrogance of this advertisement is astonishing. I get that this particular church is trying to make a play on words since the word “follow” probably refers to following the church’s actions online on twitter or some similar network.... Read more
Well this will end up being a 10 day trip but it looks like I’m only going to have 7 days worth of blogs. Yesterday as we spent our last day at the work-site in Samangola, I was contemplating what scripture to use in my sermon for Saturday’s LifeSign service since I will have very little prep time after I get home about 3 am Friday. I figured I would preach on the trip. And it hit me that the... Read more
Well I didn´t get access to the magic missionary laptop with satellite Internet the past few days so I´m playing catchup. This past Sunday was the Dominican Mother´s Day so I preached a sermon at the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana in San Rafael about how motherhood is ultimately a call to be the “pastora” of the family. Admittedly it was pretty mischievous to preach this in a patriarchal cultural setting but I was also preaching in a church with a woman pastor so... Read more
This morning I had the very unique privilege of participating in an ecumenical baptism for one member of our team Mariah Hall and a woman from the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana in San Rafael named Gleny Arias. We went to a natural spring called La Toma that’s just outside of the city of San Cristobal. It’s normally a tourist attraction with an admission fee but Pastor Carolina was able to sweet-talk the guys at the gate into letting us in for... Read more
Complicated is such a loaded word when talking about relationships. It’s kind of like the word interesting in its fake neutrality. In any case, I wanted to write today about how mission relationships are inherently complicated. Communication gaps occur that aren’t anybody’s fault especially when different languages are involved. As some of you from Burke UMC know, we have had a relationship with a school in Cambita for about 13 years. For the first 9 or so years of this... Read more
Yesterday I got drawn into a theological conversation with some of our Dominican friends. A man named Samuel was convinced that eating snake meat is sinful (which apparently some Dominicans do) because God cursed the snake in Genesis 3 for leading Eve into sin. Another man Jochi who’s the bishop’s assistant was debating with him since Jesus said that nothing created is unclean for us to eat. They turned to me and said, “Pastor, what do you think?” Because Samuel... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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