During this our third and final week with the Wesleyan understanding of grace, I want to share with you a poem written by our own Bob Olson. Grace Grace is God's gift of love Unfailing redemption "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" This Christian challenge Is to be like Jesus Learning…

In this first month with you, I've learned a lot about you. I've met many of you and had a chance to learn from you what some of your priorities are for the life of our congregation. I appreciate you letting me learn from you and listen to you and grow with you. One of the places…

While Pastor Brad is on vacation, we will have three weeks to consider grace at work in our lives and in the church. We'll use Scripture from the book of Acts and look at the various ways that God's grace acts in the lives of God's people. We'll also connect with our Wesleyan heritage and use language…

This Sunday I'll be doing interviews about where we find our answers. It will involve a few questions asked of some of our more profound alternative intelligences; resources like Siri, Alexa, and maybe one or two others. They can help us with our lists, goals, and even motivation. They can give us answers to questions, choose our…

This Sunday we will examine what our shoes say about us; what they saw about our fashion sense, the society in which we live, the culture that surrounds us, and even a bit about our cultural background.  We will even explore the roles shoes take in our lives.  There is more to our shoes than meets the…

The sanctuary was filled with a lot of excitement with over 120 children and 70+ volunteers throughout the week at this year's Vacation Bible School. We discovered that when we get our strength from God, we too can be super heroes. We started the day in Opening Assembly singing songs and learning our hero codes for the…

Spider Man, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Captain America, even Ironman all have things in common. They are super heroes who possess powers that seem, well, super-natural. Each seems to have a singular power that is then undergirded by others. They seem to be a part of a close knit group that seeks to work together to conquer…

I've thoroughly enjoyed my first two weeks with the Aldersgate community! This week, I will share the message in worship for the first time. This summer is a time when I'm getting to know you and you are getting to know me. It is also a time when the Spirit is moving among us, inviting us into…

This Sunday we welcome Rev. Laura Baumgartner as our Associate Pastor. Laura brings some wonderful experiences, passions and gifts to us. She knows Bellevue well as having taught at Robinswood and now The International School. She has been a lay person and leader at both University Temple in Seattle, and Riverton Park in Tukwila. As such she…

Annual Conference took place last week. It was the first time in history that both the Pacific Northwest and Oregon-Idaho conferences met together. Given that we met at the Red Lion Jantzen Beach, which sits on an island surrounded by the Columbia River, the conference was about making connections and about life giving water. As I head…