Dave Buerstetta on striving to do justice and love others while walking humbly with God
Today is known as "Good Friday." Well, it's actually only known as such among English- and Dutch-speaking people. Other names for this day include, according to UMC Discipleship Ministries, "'Holy Friday' among the Latin nations, "Great Friday" among the Slavic peoples, "Friday of Mourning" in Germany, "Long Friday" in Norway, and "Holy Friday" (Viernes Santo) among Hispanic …
Continue reading Moving from “Good” Friday to a holy Saturday
The Psalms of Lent was our theme for the season at Woodridge United Methodist Church. as we prepare to enter Holy Week, I thought it would be fun to collect all the Psalms we used in one place...so I did. Each Sunday in Lent we first heard the Psalm from the New Revised Standard Version …
Interconnected. Mutual. "What affects one directly, affects us all indirectly." Issues overlap. We've talked about this a number of times at my church. For instance, I've been known to say something like this, "If we want to talk about ending homelessness, we have to talk about the lack of affordable housing. If we want to …
Continue reading ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…’
One recent morning at the gym I go to, the group present for class included a guy whom I hadn't met yet. I'm still fairly new to this gym, so I didn't really think anything of it. There are any number of members there I have yet to meet. After the class, as we were …
Here's a little something that got sucked into my black hole of non-blogging during the last [gulp] half of 2015: That is a picture of the results of the Offering of Letters we collected in October. Apparently, it wasn't as memorable as I would have liked. When I asked our church's Administrative Council what the …
[Note: I originally wrote this as my year-end letter to my congregation. But I thought it might be worth sharing a little wider.] I intended to help us ring in the new year with a couple suggestions of ways we can challenge ourselves to learn and grow in our faith -- which is to say, …
The worst part about naming my blog "All That I Can't Leave Behind" is that when I don't post for a while (or, you know, 6. Freakin'. Months!), it seems as if I have nothing to say. Which isn't exactly true. I've done some blogging over on my church site. But it is undeniable that …
"Jesus shows us how to live with the Creator, with creation, and with creatures." That's a line from my sermon this past Sunday, in which I compared the kind of Lord Jesus is to the kind of Lord we've too often made him into. I contend that - based on his birth, life, death and …
What is distinctive about the United Methodist Church? What is United Methodist identity? In other words, what makes United Methodists United Methodists? This is the question our Confirmation class pondered the last couple weeks. How would you respond? (Or, for my non-UMC readers, how would you answer the question for your denomination or religion or …
If you've been around Woodridge United Methodist Church (the church I serve as Koinonia Pastor) at all during the last couple of Advent seasons, you likely know that I'm a big fan of the song, "The King of Glory Comes." I liked it well enough on it's own, but after I found this video, well, …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 