Former PC(USA) moderator and prolific blogger Bruce Reyes-Chow has started a petition drive called “There is more than one version of Christianity!” His point is that there is a great deal of diversity the Christian family. Christians need to be more tolerant of one another and the media and culture need to recognize Christian diversity, too.Read More »Big Tent?
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
February 12, 2012
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Our friend Sharon Curry, who went in December to serve as a missionary in the South Sudan, had to be evacuated almost as soon as she arrived because of ethnic violence. She has been frustrated by this, obviously—not only because she has been interrupted in the mission work she intended to do, but even more because she’s been in her placement in Akobo just long enough to get to know people. Now she is in a major city, Malakal, far from the fighting, hearing second-hand how overwhelmed her friend the local doctor is, and how all the families she’d just gotten to know are experiencing deaths and hiding in the forest, afraid to go to the hospital for fear that they’ll be killed by guerilla fighters.Read More »Secret Agenda: Mark 1: 40-45
http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/missionconnections/curry-sharon-2012-1/
and on http://the-journey-s-in-s.blogspot.com/
January 5, 2012
I just looked at the calendar on my computer in astonishment as I read the date. I wanted to ask the question that I have been asked on a regular basis since I arrived in South Sudan, “Is it really? Are you sure?” I can’t believe it has been only five days since this year began!
If the saying, “So starts the year, so goes the rest” is true, it is going to be one heck of a ride this year. Hang on tight! We are all in for the ride of our lives!Read More »A letter from Sharon Curry in South Sudan
Genesis 1: 1-5
January 8, 2012
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
What with the ongoing concerns about the end of the world so often dominating Christian conversation, we often forget that Christianity is not about endings. It’s about beginnings.
Even the so called “end times” are not about endings, per se, but beginnings. The “end times” also known in the Bible as “The Day of the Lord”—in other words, the day when God’s reign, which has always been reality even though we did not see it, is at last officially inaugurated. The “end times” are not the end of the world, as we are often taught—they are the beginning of the new, true world, the new heaven and the new earth.Read More »Beginnings: Baptism of the Lord, 2012
One of my former parishioners from Bethesda Presbyterian in Bethesda, MD, was in town last week for a conference. He lives, of all places, in London, England now. And he brought good news: he’s getting married to an English woman, a “barrister,” as the Brits call them. She sounds very intelligent, lively, and fun–perfect for my friend.
But she is not a Christian. She claims to be “agnostic,” but he suspects she’s just sugar-coating it “because she loves me.”Read More »Why Be A Christian? Part One: Need
Mark 13: 24-37
November 27, 2011
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
I’m sure we all remember the big billboards a few months ago announcing that The Judgment was coming on May 23, 2011, so we all better be ready. And of course, it didn’t, and then the purveyor of this idea, evangelist and radio host Harold Camping, said he’d made a slight math mistake—don’t we all make math mistakes?–and actually the day of the Lord was to arrive on October 21, and of course, it didn’t again, but I don’t think people were paying as much attention, so I suppose it could have come and nobody noticed it.Read More »“Tell Us, When Will This Be?”–Everyday Apocalypses
We are studying the story of Jacob and his family in our weekly Bible Study. It’s a story that reminds us why the Bible is a better book than we give it credit for. Jacob is a scoundrel, a liar, and too clever by half. He ends us fathering the Twelve Tribes of Israel because he’s outsmarted by his father-in-law Laban, who tricks him into marrying the daughter he doesn’t want to marry so that he can marry the one he does want to marry. There’s more sex, family dysfunction, and intrigue in this story than there is in Desperate Housewives. God is, at least to the protagonists, almost an afterthought, a bit player in their family drama. But through it all, God is working God’s purpose out. Through Jacob’s line the blessing that God has promised the world through Abraham’s heirs is perpetuated.
I asked everyone, “How does this story affect the way you look at your own dysfunctional family?”
2 Peter 1: 16-21
This past weekend I attended the “Next Church” conference in Indianapolis. I always feel l have to explain that this isn’t the “Next Church” as in, “What’s the next church I’m going to be pastor of?” I’m not going anywhere. No, it’s “Next Church” as in, “What is the next church we, as a denomination, are becoming?” The conference brought pastors, elders, and seminarians together to discuss the future of the PCUSA. It was exciting but also sobering. I’ll start with why we are asking the question in the first place.Read More »Vision Glorious
