Lord God, We come before you this day planted firmly in our faith and our hearts full of wonder as we imagine how your Word will nourish us this morning and move us to fully embrace our calling as your disciples. With the summer behind us — a time of rest and rejuvenation — we […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor © 2024, Dr. Tamilio Here we are: a new program year for our church.  There are so many opportunities for us: opportunities to think outside the box, opportunities to grow.  I do not mean that we have to do things differently for the sake of doing them differently, […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor © 2024, Dr. Tamilio This is it.  The last hurrah.  Labor Day weekend.  The summer is officially over.  Those of us who are here today didn’t go away for the weekend.  We’ll be going home to mow, and paint, and clean, and organize, and all those other things […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor  © 2024, Dr. Tamilio  I Put on the whole armor of God. When I hear that verse from Ephesians, I think of the hymn that we are going to sing in just a bit: “Onward Christian Soldiers.”  This hymn doesn’t appear in our hymnal, nor is it published […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor My Dad died eight years ago yesterday. Of course, I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. I have not been thinking about the lessons he taught me. I haven’t been thinking about his accomplishments. I haven’t been thinking about the life he provided us or the love […]

© 2024, Dr. Tamilio  Even though there is a “Good Shepherd” Sunday on the liturgical calendar, readings about Christ as the Good Shepherd (including that much beloved Psalm 23) appear from time to time throughout all three years of the cycle.  Today is one of those days. I was recently listening to Dr. Charles Stanley […]

We’ve got four things to cover today.  Let’s begin at the beginning. Baptism.  When we baptize anyone — a child, a teen, or an adult — we are welcoming them into the wider Church, the body of Christ, which includes all Christian churches: Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox believers.  We are all one in Christ, as […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor © 2024, Dr. Tamilio As an ordained minister, I often find myself in curious conversations.  Let’s say I am at some event, or a party or a get-together, and I am just relaxing or engaged in a casual conversation, the minute someone finds out what I do, they […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor © 2024, Dr. Tamilio  Today is Pentecost: the day that the Church was born.  After Jesus ascended into Heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to the believers in Jerusalem.  Tongues of fire appeared over their heads, and they began speaking in tongues.  Actually, they began speaking in such […]

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor © 2024, Dr. Tamilio Jesus is up or he’s down.  He’s in or he’s out.  There was a time when our culture thought worshipping him was a core American value.  Now, in some circles, we are seen as an antiquated prescientific spiritual worldview that upholds intolerance — and […]