Letters from the Pastor
The Last Eight Years
Dear Church Family, Eight years ago today I began to serve as your pastor. I preached my trial sermon in late January 2015 and the congregation subsequently voted to call me as pastor. Isabella was in the second semester of fifth grade at the time, and she was...
The Important Moments
Dear Church Family, Here’s an inspirational story from the recent week’s sermon clipping floor. Perhaps it will be helpful as we reflect on the big picture in life and in our church. Russell Schweickart (far right in photo) was an astronaut who flew the...
Coffee for Our Valentines
On Valentine’s Day, our church sponsored a “Free Coffee Drive-Thru” as an outreach to the community. It was spearheaded by the Outreach Implementation Team as an opportunity to share God’s love with our neighbors. There are too many people to list, but I wanted to say...
Unified Church
Dear Church Family, A unified church pleases God! In Psalm 133, the psalmist reminds us of this truth. The following is from The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson: 1-3 How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! It’s like costly anointing...
2023 Summary Report
Dear Church Family, At each quarterly congregational meeting, ministerial staff members bring brief reports to provide an overview of their ministry activity over the previous quarter. On Sunday January 29, 2023, I presented the following thematic report to offer...
Leadership
Dear HRBC Family, In their classic book, Lead Like Jesus, Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges offer four domains of leading like Jesus: heart, head, hands, and habits. They state that the internal domains, the motivations of our hearts and the leadership perspective of our...
Thank You!
Dear HRBC Family, I love our church! As your pastor, I consider it a great joy to serve alongside our congregation! Thank you for the ways you live out our guiding, North Star statement: “Loving, Understanding and Empathizing with our community ... and the world.”...
Disrupted Plans
Dear HRBC Family, Have you ever made plans, only to have them disrupted? Perhaps there was an illness, a job situation or a cost increase that caused things to change or to be put on hold. The COVID-19 pandemic (hereafter simply referred to as “covid”) taught us all...