Rev. Andrew's Adventures

During the season of Lent, the 40 Days leading up to Easter (not counting Sundays), we will be starting a new series, beginning on Ash Wednesday at 5:00pm, February 14 through Palm/Passion Sunday, which will be March 25.  Starting on Monday, February 19 at 10am and Wednesday, February 21 at 4:30pm, we will be offering a Lenten study around Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes’ book, Gifts of the Dark Wood, which offers some different insights around the sometimes dark places in our lives and how they can end up being a blessing in disguise.  To reserve a copy of the book, please contact the church office.  You are welcome to donate $10 to the book fund when you pick your book up.  Our worship services, starting with Ash Wednesday on February 14 will touch on the theme of rehabilitation.  According to the team at Discipleship Ministries in Nashville (Dawn Chesser, Taylor Burton-Edwards, & Jackson Henry), There is much to mine from considering our Lenten journey ...

How is it already the month of February?  I suppose as I get older, time tends to move even faster, as each new year goes by quicker and quicker.  While it feels like we just put away our Christmas decorations, we are already looking toward the season of Lent, the forty days (not counting Sundays) before Easter that begins on Ash Wednesday, February 14 (Valentine’s Day).  As the team at Discipleship Ministries in Nashville (Dawn Chesser, Taylor Burton-Edwards, and Jackson Henry) explain, the annual observance of the Lenten discipline among Christians is a time to seek restoration for our lives. It is a time to reflect, take stock of our spiritual condition, and realign our lives. Our method for taking stock is the baptismal covenant as our reference point and making good use of the means of grace as our method. We enter the season through the Ash Wednesday call “in the name of the church, to observe a holy Lent: by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fast...

Community UMC, Quincy “Rise Up! Answer” Pastor Andrew Davis January 28, 2018 Deuteronomy 18: 15-20             How many of you like having an answer to every question you are asked?  I know I do!!  Yet, sometimes answers evade us and will admit that I will oftentimes get upset when I don’t have answers.  Any of you find yourselves there too?  Sometimes, we don’t always have an answer to everything, and as I’ve learned the older I get, we don’t always need to have an answer to everything either as frustrating as it can be when we don’t.  As I alluded to last Sunday, even though there is a tongue-in-cheek expectation among many that pastors are to have all the answers to everything, the reality is that we don’t always have all the answers to everything and that’s okay, as we can flesh out the answers together whenever we face life’s greatest questions.        ...

Community UMC, Quincy “ Rise Up! Move ” Pastor Andrew Davis January 21, 2018 Jonah 3: 1-10 Mark 1: 14-20             In some ways, we could almost change the words to our gathering song to “I’m gonna move when the Spirit says move (3X)…and obey the spirit of the Lord.”             We definitely gotta move with the Spirit, that ’s for sure.  Yet there are also places we don’t always want to go into either.  What are some of the places you still go to, yet you would rather not?  <Allow for responses>             For the longest time, hospitals w as something I avoided and just the thought of going into a hospital kinda made me turn a shade or two green.  Even nursing homes.  Yet once I got into the practice a few years ago, it was a total transformation that I could walk into a...

Community UMC, Quincy “ Rise Up! Listen ” Pastor Andrew Davis January 14, 2018 1 Samuel 3: 1-20         How many of you have heard things, just out of the blue?  How about hearing your name called in a crowd of people, only to turn and not see anyone that you know?  It can be a little startling, to say the least.  Of course, there are times I have just heard things at random, which will result in getting a little frustrated. I like to know who’s calling my name and see who it is, so that perhaps we can engage a little further.              As we began our series, “Rise Up!” last week, we talked about how God speaks to us, whether it is through other people, through dreams, through an audible voice out of nowhere, or  other sign s.  I shared last week that a few months ago in the midst of several natural disasters and unrest, a friend of mine from semina...