On Buddha’s Relics and the First Easter By Pastor Emmanuel Ilagan While I was working with the Christian Conference of Asia (the umbrella organization of churches and church councils in Asia) I had the opportunity to visit several Asian countries. These countries take pride in Read More …
He must have been around five (5) years old, but he had never experienced the joys of childhood. He is the boy who was pulled out from the rubble caused by an air strike in Aleppo in strife-torn Syria. There are girls and boys like Read More …
So I’m going to tell you a secret about us preachers today, but don’t get your hopes up, it’s nothing very juicy. Whenever we open up the lessons and find out that we have to preach about demons, it is, as we used to say Read More …
When Paul wrote the following admonition to Timothy the Jewish people were under Roman rule. Rome allowed the Jews to pray for the Emperor’s health without praying and sacrificing to him.
I have recently come across a Christian blog post entitled, “Killing the Church with Sunday School”. “Oh no!”, I thought. How can Sunday School be bad for church? What could we be doing wrong? I had to read. Luckily, the point of the post is Read More …
Devotional for April 2016 By Pastor Noel ILAGAN It was a late winter morning and I was riding on the 6-line subway train from the Bronx to Manhattan in New York. The passengers on the train were doing their own thing – either trying to Read More …
I guess I love Christmas as much as anybody (with the possible exception of Edith Klose, who has more Christmas decorations than God). My love of Christmas is very resilient: it has survived not only my own massively dysfunctional family, but also the professional necessity Read More …
I like the month of October. I like the crispness of leaves turning color and the smell of Apfel Kuchen baking in the oven. It also includes one of my favorite holidays – not Halloween, but Reformation. As a child, I was treated to an Read More …
As we considered a rather discouraging Treasurer’s Report last week, I told the Church Council very firmly that I am not going to preach about money. I don’t like to do it because I am personally not very interested in money, and also because I Read More …
This month I was given a course at my workplace called “Inclusive Leadership”. The general theme was to show how our biases towards people determine whether they are included or excluded. Among the “students” were several seasoned managers, myself included, who started the morning with Read More …