Archives For Ministry

I preached the third message in our current series, “Holy & Human” this week. This week’s message was entitled, “Conquering Fear” and reminded us that although there are many books on the subject of ridding our lives of all fear, that is not a part of God’s plan. We have been designed with fear – and some fear keeps us safe. It’s when fear overtakes us and becomes an idol in our life that we find trouble.

This week we had my cousin, Brock and his family visiting us from the Washington, DC area. Jess and I enjoyed singing FFH’s “One of These Days” with Brock for special music. After my sermon this week we also had Rev. Randy Swink, our District Superintendent, visiting and he performed our official pastoral installation ceremony.

It was a great and exhausting Sunday. The night before, Brock and I joined a couple of guys from the church and we drove to Harrisburg to serve the homeless with the Bethesda Mobile Mission.

This morning I preached the second message in the series, “Holy & Human” entitled, “Overwhelmed but Unmoved” which reminded us to respond to overwhelming situations by acknowledging our limitations, accomplishing something, and thinking about “such things” (remembering our focus).

Of course on the Sunday I preach about how we should respond to being overwhelmed I was quite overwhelmed. From technology issues to music issues, it was a challenge to work through the issues of the day and focus solely on worship and the Word but the Lord prevailed and I felt like it was a good morning.

Sadly my attempt at recording the sermon failed again this week, posing as another area of frustration that I need to get sorted out before next week!

I’ve been working some late-nights over the last few days on our new church website. I am thankful for help from one of my tech-friendly and knowledgeable church guys, Tom, who has put the same – if not more – hours into making it happen!


The site is built on the Joomla CMS (content management system). I am very proud of what we’ve come up with and where the site is headed in the future days and weeks.

Check out the full site at http://www.firstwesleyanship.org

A new book that just released TODAY has a lot of pastors and ministries talking. It’s called “Funded and Free” and was written by Casey Graham and Joseph Sangl. It’s available for purchase on their site here or from Amazon here. I haven’t yet read it, but am looking forward to doing just that!

Church finances seems to be THE ‘hot topic’ in ministry circles today as I’m sure it’s been an area of discussion since the New Testament era, too. I have heard numerous “stewardship” messages in my 30+ years in church and am excited to begin working on a series to deliver here in Shippensburg in the future. I am attempting to surround myself with numerous resources and ideas to begin building that series, too.

I’d love YOUR input (in the comments section) of resources, people, and ideas that you have heard or even used in the past on the area of stewardship and finances in the local church.

This morning I introduced my first sermon series to our church family. The series is based on the book by the same title, “Holy & Human” by Earle Wilson. This week I kicked the series off with a message about frustration.

Frustration IS a part of our life – how we react to those frustrations is what we focused on this morning. Our people responded well to the message and the closing challenge. I thank the Lord for that!

This afternoon the entire Sheets family napped like our lives depended on it. We all needed the rest! The kids continue to fight their colds while mom and dad have managed to steer clear of the worst of it.