The real reason people don’t volunteer is because we don’t have enough people who ask them. I love this quote because it is so true. Volunteering has historically played an important role in the United States. Volunteers are wonderful people who are necessary for the health of our society. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is celebrated as a national Day of Service. We are also a country whe…
As you know there are many denominations and “flavors” of Christianity. In 2012 Christianity Today estimated there are “approximately 38,000” Christian denominations. Wow, that’s a lot of different human viewpoints of what it means to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. So I wonder with all of these various ways of being church, and with church attendance in general declining over the last several d…
Imagine yourself a missionary. Though you probably value and support missionaries, it is too far out of your comfort zone. It looks too much like difficult living conditions and too many sacrifices. When I was young I thought I wanted to be a missionary going to some distant land. Little did I know that God was already using me as a missionary. Clifford Taylor was our old bachelor neighbor. …
While most of the time I am a road cyclist, occasionally I get the itch to explore somewhere new on my mountain bike. This will inevitably include a season of finding myself completely and hopelessly lost, usually in a deep valley where any choice I make will involve lots of hill climbing. A mistake will mean lots of spent (and ultimately, wasted) energy. And so I’ve found myself suddenly with a d…
Produce to People is the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank’s large-scale produce distribution program. They operate 17 distributions each month at 17 different locations. Each family receives 30-50 pounds of food, mostly fresh produce. Westminster provides all of the volunteers at the north side location 3 Saturdays a year and has done so for at least the past 9 years. We register folks, pr…
