Bill Teague’s lpc e-pistle

Do the rest of you do small group sharing?  The church became an important part of my life during my college years and I have been employed in one form or another by the church since 1975. I long ago lost count of the conferences I have attended and the presbytery committee meetings I have been a part of.  Conferences and committees; “small group sharing” has been a feature of way too many of them. I wonder if the rest of you do small group sharing.

Thursday’s meeting was no exception to the small group sharing rule. It happens to have been a gathering of one of the standing committees of the Presbytery of Philadelphia.  It is a very large committee and Thursday’s agenda was long and the items on the agenda important. I was there as a member of a panel invited to present some information on a particular topic. Not my committee. But since our panel presentation was first up on the docket, we were there for the opening of the meeting. Continue Reading »

I’m feeling grumpy this morning.  I read the President’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, and I don’t like it at all.  I will tell you why I don’t like it in a minute.  First, let me tell you that I always read the President’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation and I like some better than others. Over the years some have been, well, turkeys while others have soared like an eagle. If you’re interested, you may read every single one of them here. Let me say, too, that among those turkey and eagle proclamations have been both Democrat and Republican authors.

Pity the poor White House writer who has to compose these things. Continue Reading »

Several weeks ago I shared the wonderful story of Kamate Takoudjou, the seven-year old boy from the Cameroon in West Africa who had lost sight in one eye due to an injury to his cornea and subsequent scar tissue that was causing the blindness.

You may remember how God brought together friends known and unknown, brothers and sisters in Christ, to allow Kamate to undergo the complicated transplant surgery he needed. From the Cameroon to Kenya, from the Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia to Langhorne Presbyterian Church, God was at work for his good purposes.

We thank God for the faithfulness of parents and friends, physicians and church members, medical technology and a mission budget, all of which made Kamate’s surgery possible.  Mostly, though, we thank God for his amazing grace. Continue Reading »

Last night’s Conan O’Brien television program featured an on-stage wedding presided over by the host himself. Of course, it is not the first time vows have been said on late night television. Some of us are old enough to remember Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki tying the knot on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show back in 1969, though unlike Conan, Carson did not officiate.

The fact that the two people married last night were both men may have garnered some extra headlines and publicity for Conan. Continue Reading »

Forget Halloween. Forget the candy and the costumes.  We’ve got a hat trick of great holidays that will get the week off to a wonderful start: Reformation Day on Monday, All Saints Day on Tuesday and All Souls Day on Wednesday.  They are worth celebrating.

First up is Reformation Day. The medieval church marked October 31 as All Saints Eve or All Hallows Eve (hence Halloween). Martin Luther chose the day in 1517 to post his 95 Theses on the chapel door in Wittenberg.  The 95 Theses were a long list of theological abuses and pastoral malpractice Luther saw plaguing the medieval church. So he went to the chapel and nailed his list to the door. Nothing hugely significant about the chapel door. It was the community bulletin board and his wouldn’t be the only notice, though possibly the longest, tacked on the door for all to read. The chapel door was a sort of old-fashioned You Tube. The 95 Theses went viral. Continue Reading »