Recent Blogs

Testify to Love

2016 Chapel Choir Tour

Please Follow us on our daily blog as we give highlights of our adventures.  We will reveal interesting facts and highlights we learn each day.  Members of the Blog Crew this year are Kotomi Crabdree, Wes Davenport, Lily Dunn, and Sam Prazma.

Schedule for the 45th Annual Chapel Choir Tour

Pre-Tour Concert

March 20, 2016  -  Baker Memorial UMC - St. Charles, IL.

Tour Schedule

This week I am preaching on the Prodigal Son story, or if you are a positive person, it is really a story about the compassionate father and two sons. I uncovered some surprising insights while reading about life in a Palestinian village during the time of Christ that I will share in my sermon.

For insight into life and friendships old and new with music to lift your spirits to a new place, come and join us this Sunday as we bring a bit of Easter into the last week of February.

This Sunday, we'll hear together what happens when Jesus helps to lead worship at a local synagogue.  Not surprisingly, he shakes things up a bit with his different perspective on a standard religious idea - this time on what it really means to "remember the Sabbath."

How do you "remember the Sabbath" in your life? Do you find ways to pause in the midst of your week for an hour, for a day, for a change of pace that allows your spirit to be refreshed, or to make some space to listen for God?

This Sunday I will continue my sermon series on Dreams. I will reflect on how dreams can be born amid the dusty moments that sometimes cause us to sneeze. I am using the scripture Genesis 1 where God used Chaos, or dust, to create life and how we too can use a word, a gesture or action to bring life again to the dust, or create a new order amid chaos. This is where God began and sometimes it's where we find ourselves.

This is the time of year we often focus on fresh starts - perhaps in diet or exercise, perhaps in tackling new projects, or setting new goals. And it can also be a time of "fresh starts" in our spiritual lives.

We will start off 2016 with a "Covenant Renewal Service" on Sunday, January 3 at each of our worship services - 8:15, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

The Covenant Renewal Service has been used by Wesleyan-related churches for over 200 years. This traditional service helps us to reflect on the year past, recommit ourselves to God in the year ahead and return to a life of integrity, service and joy in the world. Our scripture for the day is Matthew 2:1-12, the account of the wise men's journey to find Jesus, and Pastor Jim's message will be "Interpretive Understanding."

We hope to see you Sunday - the first Sunday in 2016!

- Pastors Jim and Greta

Christmas Day is just a week away and while this realization brings delight to the younger people among us, the older people may be experiencing anxiety or even panic!

One of our local publications recently published an article titled "7 Tips to Help You Get Through Christmas" (which, truth be told, was actually a pretty helpful article). This article picked up the sense we have regarding the expectations we attach to Christmas so that it is requirement to be completed rather than a promise to be lived.

Advent is the hoping and waiting for the coming of Christ. Jesus has carved our names beside his into the trunk of a tree. Jesus is kneeling beside us, whispering into our memory and imagination to a life that he has searched us out for and made possible for us to enter.

Once again, we will be gathering for worship on Sunday morning with devastating news from the week weighing deeply in our hearts - this time from the violence and taking of life in San Bernardino, California.

This Sunday at all three services, we will welcome Deacon Wes Dorr and lay leader Sabrina Bermingham from the United Church of Rogers Park, our sister church in Chicago with which we have an on-going connection of supportive giving and annual mission trips. We have an additional connection in that former DGFUMC member Rev. Catiana McKay has been the pastor at Rogers Park since 2007.

This Sunday I will be giving a short reflection on Mark: 10 46-52 where Jesus meets up with Bartimaeus who was a blind beggar.

Mark tells this story in which those who are the professional holy people, those who have most exposure to Jesus and his teaching, and those who have the most money and status, all fall away and are all supplanted by this solitary blind beggar, who alone does exactly what Jesus wants - he "follows him on the way."