We live-stream our 10AM Sunday worship via YouTube. To join put the date (example: 1.3.2021) into the YouTube search bar followed by "Prineville Presbyterian Church worship." Or email the church (prinevillepc@gmail.com) and we'll send each Sunday's link.  

Nearly a year into this pandemic that’s throttled back our church activities, and I’ve noticed a pattern as people stop by to drop things off, or, to pick something up.

As though they’re drawn by an unseen force…they wander toward the sanctuary…and somewhere around the glass double doors they pause…look around… and say – “I sure do miss this place.”

It’s not the building they miss…rather…it’s the special space the building holds in our lives…

…its particular preciousness.

In our quiet moments through this pandemic I believe this question of “what’s precious” has emerged in everybody’s minds.

Good people who have known a lot of good things, yet now recognize that there are fewer things they hold onto much more tightly.

Yet even at that… there is still something more...and whatever that is...has turned out be very elusive.

Looking to the year ahead, as the lines that organize our lives have been blurred and smudged…

…our traditional paint-by-numbers ways of explaining the Good News of Jesus Christ might not fit so well…

...meaning we might find ourselves having to ‘color outside the lines’ to make the Good News of Jesus Christ effective and real.

Grab your crayons and join us – we livestream Sundays at 10AM using YouTube.

Together We Serve,                                                                                                            Pastor Mike

We live-stream our 10AM Sunday worship via YouTube. To join put the date (example: 1.3.2021) into the YouTube search bar followed by "Prineville Presbyterian Church worship." (You might need to click the 'subscribe' button).   

Over the 3 ½ weeks of Advent leading to Christmas, Prineville Presbyterian Church followed the traditional Advent calendar and also a reverse Advent calendar.

Instead of taking something as traditional Advent calendar would have us do (usually a piece of candy) we asked folks to put aside a food item each day. These were put under the Christmas tree, and will be given to a food pantry in a few days. Also, at least three significant cash contributions were made to the food pantry.

As we start a New Year, this pandemic season has no respect for our changing of the calendar meaning last year’s struggles for many to feed their family will continue as well.

The Bible reminds us that “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

In his thoughts about this Stanley Romaine Hopper wrote: “This may urge us to wisdom in the timing of our enterprises, that we may know when to seize the opportunity, feel for the opening door; or when to conclude that the door will not open, that there is nothing to do but wait and knock elsewhere.”

The time is always right for us to seize the opportunity to offer practical love to our neighbors.

Together We Serve (and seize),                                                                                          Pastor Mike 

We'll be live-streaming our Christmas Eve worship at 5PM via YouTube. 

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, or send us your email 

and we'll send you the link shortly before the worship starts: 

prinevillepc@gmail.com   

“Advent is patience its how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.”  ~ Stanley Hauerwas

 We started Advent yesterday with a theme of HOPE. Advent is our time of preparation while awaiting the birth of the Christ-child (Christmas).

 My wife and I are awaiting the birth of a grandchild in early June. Our preparation as we wait comes with its own wonderful treasury too.

 What are the unique God-given characteristics, gifts, and abilities they’ll bring into our world? 

It doesn’t take long before our minds wonder and our spirits wander with all kinds of hopes taking shape as part of our waiting.

 While delivering  the first of four Advent themed sermons, I couldn’t help but think of the groceries under the Christmas tree and off to my left that PPC has collected, and the families PPC has adopted for Christmas. 

And while my treasure chest full of lovely ponderings brings us to the riches that await us at the moment of our grandchild’s birth…

…we also have to keep in mind many of us get to do this from a position of stability or security – or dare I say -- privilege?

For these receiving the groceries and adopted families, hope looks a lot different.

I’m not saying that to be critical or demeaning. Quite the contrary.

They no more chose the circumstances of their birth any more than I chose mine.

 The grace and peace given us with the Christ-child’s birth sets the stage for our hopes.

 Hope that’s comfortable and easy when all is graceful and peaceful.

Hope that’s desperately important when all is not.

 May Advent teach us to ‘hear’ hopes beyond our own.

 We’re livestreaming via YouTube Sundays at 10AM, and Christmas Eve at 5PM.

Together We Serve,                                                                                                            Pastor Mike

 “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count…” Revelation 7:9

As John writes the above about his vision of heaven, he had just seen all those people he (and we) would expect to find there.

Yet in John’s vision 'after this' he looks again and from out of nowhere he’s surprised to see all these others too.

In the timeless reach of God’s grace, might John’s surprise also be our surprise as we see people in heaven who we might not have thought would be there?

Trump supporters and Biden supporters as well as those who vote for Jo Jorgenson and Howie Hawkins and Dario Hunter. Those who fervently wear masks and those who are fervently anti vaxxers.

And would they be every bit as surprised to see us there too?

Because as they felt the chill of our judgments it left them wondering how could we ever bask in the warmth of God’s love?

Yet there we all are.

All bound in this radical inclusivity of God we find throughout the Bible where salvation does not belong to any nation or tribe or people or language…

…where all hear the audaciously glorious good news of God’s final word of making all things right.

Join us Sundays at 10 AM as we righteously press on following this election. We're livestreaming on YouTube.

Together We Serve,

Pastor Mike

The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…” Luke 17:5-6

Jesus followed this up by putting his followers in the place of boss with a decision to make about a servant coming after a long day; would they pile more on that servant by asking them fix their supper – or – invite them to eat with them?

So maybe that mustard seed question is less about having enough faith, and more about having even just a little bit of faith…

…even just a little bit of enough faith to share a meal with somebody we would otherwise dismiss.

Where we invite them to the table and they return the favor by inviting us into their lives.

And as we talk around the table and share stories what do we come to learn and know and understand about others?

Is our faith in Christ big enough to listen to these stories from people who are not on our ‘A list’ of people we would invite?

To have even that small mustard seed of faith to look at life through the servant’s eyes…

and see somebody looking for some measure of respect…

…some acknowledgment that their existence is something more.

That they matter.

Ponder this: the size of that mustard seed is just about the same thickness as a hand-written dinner invitation.

You’re invited to join us as we meet 10AM Sundays in-person and on-line.

Together We Serve,                                                                                                           

Pastor Mike 

 

“I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; 

I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.”

 ~1 Corinthians 14:15

 

With social distancing, masks, contact tracing, and very low COVID numbers in our county; PPC recently added the option of in-person worship. This is in addition to our other platforms of YouTube live-stream, recorded live-stream, and FM parking lot broadcast.

As we did, we also took that moment to “praise” as this ‘next normal’ brought us closer to what we used to know as normal in this COVID 19 season and the comforting hope that comes with that.

We also gave praise that over this past five months of virtual worship only we have continued the actual ministry of Jesus Christ by extending hope however we can make it real; the use of our shower, assisting with simple shelter (another amazing God-timing story), investing in a gentleman so he could take and pass a drug test in order to return to work…

We gave praise for our role in echoing themes throughout the Bible where we continually find God’s assurances of better days ahead.  

Reflecting upon the above Corinthians passage, the late Bible scholar William Barclay took a longer look at this connection between hope and praise:

“The great things are essentially the simple things; the noblest language is essentially the simplest language.

In the end only what which satisfies our minds can comfort our hearts…

…and only what our minds can grasp can bring strength to our lives.”

We gather at 10AM for comfort and strength - for us and for all.

Together We Serve,                                                                                                         

Pastor Mike

 

“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” ~Ephesians 4:26

 As a pastor I often preach to myself as much as I preach to others. So a very recent sermon about how we handle frustration was put to the test upon returning home after emailing our virtual worship -- and learning the video froze part way in. 

Just when I thought our return to a recorded YouTube worship answered our problems of dropped live-stream worship, now there was yet another technical frustration.

Frustration is running wild because of the many questions surrounding us today. Life is unsettled. The problem is this frustration is spilling over into people who now think its okay to be mean.

Its from verbal attacks at our nation’s capital to horrible outbursts at local stores over masks. A clerk summed it up: “it’s not that big of a deal to make that big of a deal out of it.”

Psychologist Dr Thomas G Plante writes about this spread: “…there is social contagion with incivility in that if uncivil behavior occurs and is not confronted by corrective feedback or consequences, it tends to be more readily repeated and spreads to others.”

Apparently more than just COVID 19 is contagious.

The above Bible phrase speaks to the reality of anger and what to do about it. When we speak truthfully we put away falsehoods. When we put away falsehoods we no longer feel we must protect our own egos…

…making it easier to say only those things that extend grace to whoever our audience might be.

And while it’s easy to pass this off as some idealistic pie in the sky dream, the concern for evil speech runs throughout the Bible. Like many other behaviors, what we say matters because it can build up or tear down.

Imagine the possibilities if we all took up the challenge to make grace-filled speech contagious.

Together We Serve,

Pastor Mike

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” ~Galatians 5:1

We come across the word ‘freedom’ a lot around the 4^th of July, a word that’s often tied to ‘independence.’

Having raised 4 teenagers, when they got that growing sense of ‘independence’ that they often tried to pass off as ‘freedom,’ it boiled down to no homework, no curfew, and no chores.

That ‘freedom’ points more to wanting less responsibility – and at that ‘freedom’ becomes more like a vacation. It may be enticing however there’s no real substance to it.

What also gets passed off as ‘freedom’ is nothing more than ‘defiance.’

That’s all very different from our “freedom in Christ” where this real and true freedom is not about having a careless regard for responsibility or independence…

…as we read further beyond the above-noted phrase we learn our freedom in Christ actually comes with INTERdependence.

As His loving and grace-filled work for us gives us our freedom that nobody can take from us and defies the circumstances of our earthly existence.

It’s a freedom for us to live into Jesus’ revolutionary love every way we can.

Send your email to prinevillepc@gmail.com and we’ll gladly add you to our band of “revolutionaries.”

Together We Serve,

Pastor Mike

We’ve been recording our virtual worship since mid-March, and as part of that I begin with some opening thoughts and then light these candles to signify the beginning of our worship.

June 7th comments included the admission that it has been a stressful week…on top of a few stressful months.

The deadly arrest of George Floyd and the rioting and looting that stole headlines away from protest efforts to begin desperately needed talk about systemic racism; after months of working our way through this pandemic has all been very tiring spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. 

In lighting the candles I invited people to “Imagine the gentle warmth of these candles…softly comforting your hands…take a few deeps breaths….and feel the gentle warmth of God’s Spirit comforting our aching souls…”

I even left other lights off and pulled the candle wicks up a bit to make the candle light bigger and brighter.

A bit later we talked about 'light' being a common symbol for the presence of God. From there we moved to Jesus declaration that He is “the Light of the world.”

This not to excuse us from having very real and long overdue conversations regarding the lack of racial parity, or our best responses for all to the COVID 19 outbreak...

...but rather for us to pause from time to time and collect ourselves – and catch our breath that we know as God’s Spirit.

Join us for our virtual worship by sending your email to prinevillepc@gmail.com.

Together We Serve,
Pastor Mike