Posts by Bob Rhodes

Introduction This is week one of Dreaming the Future, a four-week stewardship series built on two books by United Methodist pastors: Earn. Save. Give.: Wesley’s Simple Rules for Money by James A. Harnish, and Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity by Adam Hamilton. As United Methodists, we promise to support the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, and that is the whole of stewardship. Questions about money often start with amounts: how much we earn, how much we owe, how much…

Introduction This is the final week of Knowing Who We Are, six weeks drawn from Rev. Dr. Laceye Warner’s book of the same name. We started with the grace God pours into us, then followed it through connexion, small groups, mission, and scripture. Methodists speak of going on to perfection, growing in grace across a lifetime. People grow in faith slowly, and much of what forms them happens through repetition, in work that seldom feels like formation at the time. In…

Introduction We’re nearing the end of our series, Knowing Who We Are, drawn from the book of the same name by Rev. Dr. Laceye Warner. So far we have explored the grace God pours into us, the connexion we belong to, the small groups of early Methodists, and the neighbors God sends us to serve. This week we turn to the texts that inform and shape us. Wesley called himself a person of one book, writing, “At any price, give me…

Introduction This is week two of “Knowing Who We Are,” six weeks on the Wesleyan way of grace. Last Sunday we started with the grace we receive from God. This week we look at the people God puts us among. Methodists spell connexion with an x because that’s how Wesley spelled it, and we keep this spelling to remember that we are connected to one another even back into our own tradition. La Jolla UMC isn’t on its own! We…

Introduction This Sunday begins Knowing Who We Are, a six-week series in our year of considering what it means to be United Methodist. Recently, we have explored our history and our baptismal promises, and over these next six weeks, we’ll journey through grace, our practice of faith, and look again at our beliefs as United Methodists. In 1742, John Wesley asked, “Who is a Methodist?” His answer, rooted in Romans 5:5, was that a Methodist is one who has the love…

Introduction This is the final Sunday of Our Baptismal Vows, our summer series on the promises of the United Methodist baptismal covenant. We’ve renounced the powers that diminish us, accepted the freedom God gives us to resist evil and injustice, confessed Jesus Christ as Savior, and promised to nurture one another in faith. The fifth and final promise is the profession of faith itself, the central words of the Apostles’ Creed: to believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Holy…

Introduction We’re four weeks into Our Baptismal Vows, our series walking through the promises of the United Methodist baptismal covenant one Sunday at a time. So far we’ve renounced the powers that diminish us, accepted the freedom God gives us to resist evil and injustice, and confessed Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The fourth promise is addressed to the congregation rather than to the one being baptized: will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life, and include…

Introduction We’re three weeks into Our Baptismal Vows, our series walking through the promises of the United Methodist baptismal covenant one Sunday at a time. So far we’ve renounced the powers that diminish us and accepted the freedom God gives us to resist evil and injustice. The third promise is confession: to confess Jesus Christ as Savior, to put our whole trust in his grace, and to serve him as Lord, in union with the Church he has opened to people…

Introduction Last week we began Our Baptismal Vows, our series on the promises of the United Methodist baptismal covenant, and we started with renunciation: turning away from the powers that diminish us. This week we consider the second promise: to accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. That freedom is God’s gift, and it is given first so that we are better equipped to give ourselves to others.…

Introduction This Sunday we begin a new five-week series, Our Baptismal Vows, walking through the promises at the heart of the United Methodist baptismal covenant one Sunday at a time. Most of us made these promises once, or had them made on our behalf, and we’ve rarely looked at them closely since. We start where the covenant itself starts: with renunciation. To renounce is to turn away from the powers that diminish us and to choose, again, who we’ll serve.…

Introduction This week we conclude our Wesleyan Vile-tality series. We have watched John Wesley climb down out of the safety of the pulpit and the church walls and preach in open fields, to coal miners and crowds who would never have set foot in a church. That was vile-tality in real life: Wesley let go of his own respectability so he could reach the people the respectable church had written off. This was a significant risk for Wesley, and that same risk…

Introduction We continue our Wesleyan Vile-tality series, and have followed the history of the people called Methodist. As the movement they built grew into an institution, more than once, the people lost their nerve. This week we turn to the ones who worked prophetically from within, refusing to leave and refusing to behave. They formed communities of accountability and care, and kept asking one plain and profound question: How is it with your soul? In the face of ridicule, the prophet Jeremiah…