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Meet the 10 newest leadership nominees at First Pres
The First Pres Nominating Committee has presented a slate of leaders to begin three-year terms of service in January 2023. Here are the nominees the congregation will elect at an Aug. 28, 2022, congregational meeting. Elders Lyle Jacobsen Raised in the Lutheran...
Blog Archive
Who helped you follow Jesus?
The Great Commission calls on us to “make disciples,” and I’ve been thinking about how to do that. In pondering this I’ve asked, Who made me a disciple and how did they do it? For me the answer to the first part of the question is many people. The same is probably...
What is sin, and what does it have to do with archery?
The word “sin” in the New Testament is related to archery and means “missing the mark.” I find this understanding of sin helpful because it brings clarity to sin’s nature. You can miss by a little or you can miss by a lot, but a miss is a miss, and so a sin is a sin....
How East Gate Ministries helps women in crisis in the Shenandoah Valley
Since 2002, East Gate Ministries has provided residential and outreach programs that help young women choose life for their unborn children. East Gate is a ministry partner, and in July is our featured local-mission group. We asked Isla Weaver, president of the...
Do you believe?
What we believe deeply impacts the way we live. For example, if I believe, like many, that all relatively decent people go to heaven, I’ll try to live a relatively decent life and vaguely hope it is good enough. On the other hand, if I believe that Jesus is the way,...
Most people say we’re on the wrong track. What an opportunity!
Have you noticed that nobody seems to be happy about where things are headed these days? Gas prices make us shake our heads. The cost of our groceries is making us think twice about what we buy. The "culture war" over guns, abortion and climate change seems to be more...
Sharing Christ’s light to immigrants and refugees
Wael Melek, who is completing his studies at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, recently joined First Pres as a pastoral intern. He will be completing an internship through the end of the year. We recently did a Q&A with Wael to get to know him better. How...
Who do you say Jesus is?
Perhaps the most important question for everyone to answer is also an amazingly evangelical question. Jesus himself asks the question in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8 and Luke 9. “Who do you say that I am?” This question is so important because how we answer the...
Agitated by the state of the world? Here are 4 better responses.
When you see and experience all that is happening in the world, what do you feel? War in Ukraine. Political fighting at home. Gun violence. Suffering and death. What do you feel? Angry? Sad? Disappointed? Hopeless? Reading the Psalms recently, I found a new word to...
Do you understand what you’re reading?
I want to consider one of the great evangelism questions we find in scripture. This question comes from Acts 8:30, where Philip asks an Ethiopian eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The best definition of evangelism is one beggar leading another to food,...
Jesus is compelling. Come to Him and see.
Salvation starts with God. This is what Jesus says in John 6:44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.” When you read John in the original Greek, that word there that we translate as “draws,” everyplace else in the New Testament, and most...