As part of the tithe we take on the last Sunday of the month, a portion of those funds are sent to widows and orphans from our sister church in Jimma, Ethiopia. We received an update to how those funds were used recently for three big purposes. First, medical...
Imagine ... Sitting at a table with a portion of scripture on one hand and a pen and paper in the other, copying out each word, each line, verse by verse. This is no exercise for a medieval monk cloistered by candlelight in a dark monastery somewhere, but rather...
Full confession – I am a cry-er. I tear up watching TV and especially when watching movies that are sweet or sappy. I cried tears of joy when the Atlanta Braves won the World Series last year. My mom, who I get this trait from, and I have a rule at funerals: We don’t...
A group from First Pres recently hosted a block party at the nearby Morrison Park neighborhood that drew several dozen residents for games, food and a time of worship. The event was part of an ongoing initiative at First Pres to experiment with outreach events that...
Students from our area colleges and universities are heading back in town, and we are ready to welcome them to the community and serve them this academic year. Here are two ways you can do help now. Block Party in the Burg More than 4,000 JMU freshmen will be coming...
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 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,...
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...
https://youtu.be/LNNV_uNAlNw 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...
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,...