Blog – River's Edge Community Church

Story About Surveys

Story About Surveys

“Surveys show that surveys never lie.” ~ Natalie Angier “Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population.” ~ Stephen Hawking "Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy." ~ Jerry Seinfeld In April, the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC) got to take a survey of our own. We discovered some interesting things but also realized there were still questions we needed help answering. Here is that process documented: Among the resources that ECO offers as our new denomination is their Flourish Ministry, which has a component focused on churches in transition, like we are (https://flourishmovement.org/churches-in-transition/). We agreed as a team it would be wise to invest part of our team’s budget in leveraging this help and got

Hot Wisdom for Desert Living

Hot Wisdom for Desert Living

Seriously, what spiritual benefit is there in moving, of all the places, to the desert? Henri Nouwen writes: “Desert spirituality is a movement toward a different type of place—the move to the desert. The desert has two aspects: wilderness and paradise. On the one hand, the desert is a dry and sterile place. It is the place of the demon. (‘When the unclean spirit goes out of a person, it wanders through waterless countries to look for a place to rest’ – Luke 11:24). And whenever God appears, the evil one is also present. . . . In the city, with its compulsions and compromises, the lines between God and the demon become blurred. Good is called evil and evil good. But in the desert the true struggle becomes clear. In the desert, where compulsions no longer rule us and we no longer can borrow an identity from the world,

Hot Wisdom for Escaping Sin

Hot Wisdom for Escaping Sin

Before we begin, here’s a quick reminder of the plan. We will start with a question, or if necessary, a short paragraph to introduce the theme. Then we will present a quote from Henri Nouwen’s epilogue in Yushi Nomura’s book, Desert Wisdom (Orbis Books, 1982). Today’s quote will be longer than most. After reading the quote, we will present one or two stories from the desert fathers from Nomura’s book or from Benedicta Ward’s The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: An Alphabetical Collection (Cistercian Publications, 1975). Today is “bonus story day.” You get three quick stories or sayings from the desert fathers. And then, we will close with a few questions to ponder. With that squarely in place, let’s begin. Why would anyone run off into the desert in search of a true and deep spirituality? Consider this. During the years when Christianity was outlawed by the Roman Empire, many

The Hot Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: Introduction

The Hot Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: Introduction

Let’s take a quiz. Suppose you want to go all in on your faith and really get serious about knowing and serving God. Where do you think would be the best place to live in order to do that most effectively? Would you move into the inner city? Would you move downtown? Would you move to the suburbs? Would you move to a rural region? Would you move to the desert? Oddly enough (at least to me), beginning in the third century, numerous people who really wanted to know God thought it best to move away from the crowds and into the desert. We know these desert-dwellers as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. And while I might quibble with their choice of the desert over being closer to people, I have to take my hat off to their wisdom. In short, they were a remarkable group of saints. Maybe some

3-3-3

3-3-3

Question: What is more important than a good question? Answer: An important quote about the importance of good questions! What do you think of these? “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” – Eugene Ionesco “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” – Naguib Mahfouz “There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K. LeGuin Let me be honest, this whole series has been in response to two questions I found in Dallas Willard’s book, The Great Omission. He wrote: “Since making disciples is the main task of the church, every church ought to be able to answer two questions: What is our plan for making disciples? Is our plan working?” Now, the

Defined Pastor Nominating Committee

Defined Pastor Nominating Committee

As we have been meeting over a few weeks now, all of our research has encouraged us to define some items as a group operating together before we start defining the job description for a new pastor. Both the book, Search: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook, as well as guidance from ECO’s website strongly recommended that we agree on our group’s vision and values. So this post is to document a few things specifically about our group. We are what ECO calls a PNC - a Pastor Nominating Committee - as our role is to bring before the congregation a candidate that we nominate for consideration to be called by River’s Edge members. So we have updated our self-naming to switch to our new denomination’s label. While we have been introduced a couple of times during the Sunday morning service, here’s a listing of the committee members here: Allyson R

Let’s Close with Prayer

Let’s Close with Prayer

I don’t know if this is true or not (and frankly, it sounds suspicious). And I can’t give proper credit to whoever this story comes from because I have no idea who that might be. Nevertheless, it is a good story. Apparently, a new club that featured exotic dancers was nearing its grand opening. Half-a-mile down the road was a very active church that was deeply concerned about the influence this club would have on their community if it opened. And so, they began to hold regular prayer meetings to pray against the club. One week before the club opened officially, they decided it would be wise to conduct a prayer walk around the building site, both as a form of prayer and of protest. Their march even made the news. Interestingly, two days after the club opened, lightning struck the building and the club burned to the ground. The

Engagingly Relevant

Engagingly Relevant

Who towers above all the other saints in antiquity? Who holds the highest spot of spirituality in the ancient world? Without a doubt, it has to be Simeon Stylites. Simeon was born in the Turkish province of Adana which, in 395 AD, was part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Before he was 16 years old, he entered monastic life; and he took to it with reckless abandon. In fact, he embraced the austere lifestyle with such fervor and passion that the other monks judged him to be unfit for community life, and they dismissed him from the monastery. But who needs a monastery to practice solitude and silence when you have a hut in the desert. For the next year and a half, Simeon enjoyed a life of quiet seclusion in search of a special spirituality highlighted by going without food or drink for the 40 days of Lent (people

Let’s Be Authentic

Let’s Be Authentic

Let me be totally transparent and honest: I do not like the trend where young people today wear their pajamas to work or to school. Yes, I am old, but in my opinion, pajamas were designed for the bedroom and not for public consumption. Plus, if your clothes are so uncomfortable that you feel the need to replace them with pajamas, the solution is not to restock your closet with nightwear, but to go out in your big boy and girl pants and purchase some comfortable clothes. There are thousands of options on display in all your local retail centers. Pajamas are for inside your own house (and that’s a concession; I would prefer to restrict pajama use to the bedroom in case someone drops by unexpectedly) and not for street use. And let’s all agree here: that is the way it has always been! Pajamas are for sleeping in;

Some Things Go Together

Some Things Go Together

Some things go together. For instance, consider these sayings: You could have knocked me over with a feather. These hemorrhoids are a real pain. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I can read him like the back of my hand. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unfortunately, some things don’t go together. Take, for instance, these misguided comments: You could have knocked me over with a fender. These hemorrhoids are a real pain in the neck. He’s a wolf in cheap clothing. I can read him like the back of my book. It’s like looking for a needle in a hayride. Some things go together and some things don’t. Sometimes, the connection is obvious. Sometimes, it isn’t. Take last week’s core strength, for instance: “We are called to grow.” Now, as core strengths go, it is rather straightforward and uncontroversial. If there was any doubt, 2 Peter

Getting Started

As the Pastoral Search Team, we are thrilled to be open about our process and include you, the rest of our church family, as much as we can while protecting the privacy of future candidates. We’re just getting started, so there’s not much to share just yet. But to begin the habit of transparency, here’s what’s been going on so far: We have a book we’ve been reading and pulling out useful tips; it’s called, Search: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook, by William Vanderbloemen. Dane found it, and we’ve all had a chance to start reading our copies. Some notes in there will likely not be as useful for River’s Edge, but there've been a number of really good points about things we should start doing early, and make sure that we’re in sync about now as a team. One of the things that the “Search” book recommended was to

How to Overcome Impossible Odds

How to Overcome Impossible Odds

I think we would all agree that the emu, Australia’s unofficial national bird, is a national treasure. Yes, they cannot fly, but they are the second-largest bird in the world and are either adorably ugly or weirdly cute. However, Australians have not always been fond of the emu and with good reason. Emus can be quite the pest. Free-roaming herds of emus have been known to invade farms, eat any and everything they can find and trample the rest into the dirt. And in the 1930’s, this was a real problem. To meet a country-wide food shortage, the government subsidized hundreds of new farms along the western coast. The smell of fresh crops must have lofted to the interior of the country because the next thing anyone knew, 20,000 emus had decided to pack up all their belongings, leave the inland regions and journey west. For them, the smell of

Not a Core Strength

Not a Core Strength

Let’s play two truths and a lie. Here we go: I was told by my first-grade teacher that I would never be a good reader. I was told by a superior that I had a lazy tongue and should reconsider my career. I was told by one of my high-school teachers that I was the worst speller he had ever seen. So, which one is the lie? Okay, I lied. All three are true (one I proved mistaken, but the other two were significantly on target—but you will have to guess which is which). Okay, new game. After learning about what these people said to me, which one comment do you and I have in common? Does it concern poor reading, poor speaking, or poor spelling? Okay, I lied. It was a trick question. We don’t have any of these specific criticisms in common. What we do have in common is that someone is routinely saying negative

How to Win the War

How to Win the War

How do you win a war? You might think that the answer is found in a superior army, a greater air force and a better navy. Or maybe advanced weapons turn the tide or perhaps its financial resources that win the day? None of your answers are even close to the truth! To discover the secret of successful warfare, you need to embrace the Liechtenstein strategy. In 1866, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia went to war. Liechtenstein allied themselves with Austria and sent 80 soldiers to tilt the war in their favor. The Austrians deployed these soldiers to guard a key highway between Austria and Italy (Italy was a Prussian pawn). One month and eight days later, the war ended (!), and the Liechtenstein army returned home to world applause. Not only was no one wounded or injured during the campaign, but while they left with 80

If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going. . . .

If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going. . . .

One of my favorite episodes in the old TV series, The X-Files, was aptly named “Humbug.” The plot was easy enough to follow. The agents are called to investigate a strange murder in a Florida town inhabited by sideshow performers. And while the whodunit is fun (was it the Fiji Mermaid, the Dog-Faced Boy or one of the other people from the town?), the real story (at least for me) focused on one of the sideshow characters named Dr. Blockhead. Now, Dr. Blockhead was in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment by any means possible. One of the key scenes is when Scully found him torturing himself by being suspended by large hooks that ripped away at his flesh. When he saw that Scully could not grasp what he was doing, he explained: “It's a variation of a Native American sun dance ritual. I suspend myself by these hooks, and the pain

How Can I Look It Up When I Can’t Spell It?

How Can I Look It Up When I Can’t Spell It?

True story. My parents had a friend who had made several bad life choices, and things were not looking up; but he had figured out a sure-fire solution to change that. Back in the day, if you were not a good speller, you were sunk. There was only one course of action: If you didn’t know how to spell a word, you had to look it up in the dictionary. But to many, that only added insult to injury: If you didn’t know how to spell it, how could you find it in a dictionary? Our friend had a solution. He created a dictionary of misspelled words. He figured out every possible way a word could be misspelled, wrote those words down phonetically and then put them in his own dictionary. It took years to put it together, but he figured it would sell like hätˌkākes. Unfortunately, right before he

What Are We to Make of All This?–Part 2

What Are We to Make of All This?–Part 2

It was hockey heaven. In February 2025, four nations faced off against each other to decide which country was the supreme hockey power in the world. Sweden, Finland, Canada and the US all sent their best players to Montreal to play for hockey glory. And it was glorious. It was fast. It was offense. It was defense. It was unbelievable goaltending. It was physical. It was everything they had versus everything the other team had, and it was breathtaking. There was not a minute that disappointed. And at the end, it all came down to who had the biggest heart, who had the indomitable will to win and who refused to give up. And it all came down to overtime in the gold-medal game between Canada and the US. And it was absolutely spectacular. Why? Because we all love a great finish (even if the Finns weren’t in the game!). Today,

What Are We to Make of All This?–Part 1

What Are We to Make of All This?–Part 1

Imagine you’re playing a very serious game of Clue. You’re wearing a fedora with the brim pulled down low, and every five minutes you say something that you hope sounds like Humphrey Bogart. You may even be packing heat. You’ve played the game well, and you are zeroing in on who-done-it. You know where the dirty deed was done and you know how it was done, but you’re not sure who did it. It could either be Professor Plum or Miss Scarlet. It is your turn. The good news is you’re holding the “library” and the “lead pipe” cards so you can play them to smoke out your culprit. In your best Humphrey, you snarl, “Library, lead pipe, Professor Plum.” No matter what happens, you will soon know which of your suspects did it. The woman to your right shows you a “Professor Plum” card. You give her a little smirk and say your favorite

Mark This Down, Part 2

Mark This Down, Part 2

“I can tell which way the wind blows,’ said Tom vainly, “and I am sure that, since Part 1 started off with Tom Swiftie puns, Part 2 will do the same!” Well, Tom was right. Here are eight more puns that you can soon mark as read. “I am a lot taller than I was yesterday,” Tom said gruesomely. “Boy, that is an ugly hippopotamus!” Tom said hypocritically. “The doctor had to remove my left ventricle,” said Tom half-heartedly. “The exit is right there,” Tom pointed out. “Let’s watch Star Wars!” Tom said forcefully. “I have a BA in social work,” Tom said with a degree of concern. “3.14159265,” Tom said piously. “I dropped my toothpaste!” Tom said crestfallen. Mark this down, after weeks of looking at a theology of demons from books of the Second Temple period and trying to ascertain where demons originated, what maladies they could inflict, how

Mark This Down, Part 1

Mark This Down, Part 1

You either hate or love Tom Swiftie puns. If you hate them, I am sorry. If you love them, well, as Tom said right before he flipped the switch, “You will be delighted.” Here are some of the classics: “‘Where are my pants?’ asked Tom briefly.” “‘These lines keep intersecting,’ Tom said crossly.” “‘I like ragged margins,’ said Tom without justification.” “‘Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes,’ Tom said sheepishly.” “‘I’ve got a new watch,’ Tom said with abandon.” “‘I’m tired of boat rides,’ Tom said sternly.” “‘I’ve been waiting to see the doctor,’ said Tom patiently.” For the last few weeks, we’ve been trying to ascertain how people in Jesus’ day (and even how Jesus himself) perceived demons. We’ve consulted the “Book of the Watchers” (3rd century BCE), the “Book of Jubilees” (2nd century BCE) and the “Dead Sea Scrolls” (1st century BCE); and all of them