There’s a meme that resurfaces every year right around Super Bowl season. It says, “You should be as excited about church as you are about the Super Bowl. So when your pastor makes a good point this Sunday, pour Gatorade over his head.” Without fail, this meme peppers my social media feeds as people tag myself and my pastoral brothers and sisters to share the joke. I have a deep and abiding...
During a recent meeting of our youth ministry, The Attic, we conducted a little experiment that I found both interesting and illuminating. The experiment was inspired by two seemingly simple questions provided in a Grow Students teaching guide. “What is something so easy to do that it doesn’t require instructions?” “If you were to provide step by step instructions for that activity, what would...
“Man plans and God laughs.” This phrase is a restatement of an old Yiddish proverb. The original wording of the phrase is, “We plan; God laughs.” If we keep going down the rabbit hole, we learn that this particular phrase takes its inspiration from the book of Psalms. At least three times in the Psalms, the author notes that God does, in fact, laugh at the planning and plotting of humanity. If...
I was in second grade during the first presidential election I can remember. The year was 1988 and I was eight years old. We held a mock election in our classroom. We were given several days to talk to our parents and other adults we respected and to watch the news or read the paper to discern for whom we wanted to vote. The candidates for that particular election were then Vice President George...
Like most people, there is a fairly predictable pattern I follow on a day to day basis. On most mornings, I get up, go through the motions of personal preparation, head down to the kitchen to make my coffee, then load into the truck to take my son to school. My office is just across the street from the high school, so once I’ve dropped him off I head directly to the office to get about the...
“All good things must come to an end.” The truth of this statement will ring loud and long in the hearts and minds of children and adults alike over the next few weeks. It isn’t just the truth that is ringing, though. It is the bells calling students back to their classes and adults back to the working world. It is the ringing of alarm clocks, both literal and metaphorical, waking us up from the...
“It’s all good.” This small phrase has been running through my head for several days now. It grabbed my attention after an encounter in an overcrowded convenience store (Buc-ee’s) somewhere in southern Georgia. As we were all attempting to navigate the cramped space, a hurried lady ran into me pushing me into another gentleman, sending the items we were holding bouncing off other patrons like...
The New Year is almost upon us. As is often the case, we find ourselves standing on the precipice of the potential and promise of another 365 days, wondering where the previous 365 have gone and how they went so quickly, while wishing we’d done more with the time that has passed. In an effort to better utilize the time available, many of us make New Year Resolutions. Perhaps you have been...
There is much debate over when the Christmas season officially begins. Some, like myself, get the party started early in late October or early November. My personal practice is to dress up as Santa Claus during our annual Trunk or Treat event to mark the arrival of the season. Others prefer to follow the church liturgical calendar and wait until the start of Advent to deck the halls and fire up...
At no time of the year is tradition more widely observed and celebrated than during the Christmas season. Traditions vary from family to family, but we all have our own cherished holiday traditions. And it is, to some extent, the feelings of hope, joy, love, and peace that those traditions inspire that help make the season so special. Traditions have a sense of transcendence to them. They...
Jeremy Myers is the Lead Pastor of First Baptist Church of Seymour, Indiana, where he has served since 2017. He has over 25 years of experience in local church ministry and not-for-profit leadership. He has a passion for helping emerging and existing generations learn to make space for each other and caring for the under-served and marginalized. In 2016, he earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from Palmer Theological Seminary, with his thesis focusing on developing connections between senior adults and youth in the church. He is a passionate and gifted communicator and is regularly invited to speak at retreats, camps, conferences, and other events. He lives in Seymour, Indiana with his wife Robyn, their two children, Mikayla and JJ, and their Golden Doodle, Evie.
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