“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” Proverbs 16:3 When you’re on the business end of ministry, it’s easy to get caught up in tasks. Launching Scripture+Shared was, and still is, a task-heavy project. Planning curriculum, booking spaces, ordering tech equipment for small groups—the list goes on. But here’s the amazing thing: tasks serve a purpose, and when we cross things off the list, we don’t count them as complete; we count them as passed to God, and God moved quickly and in big ways. On the marketing side, we began advertising the [...]

We are truly blessed people. As people who have the luxury of knowing about Jesus and his infinite love for us, we should never stop being grateful. In Student Ministries, we try to put this idea to work in the lives of our students through our Move Houston service projects. The idea is to get our students off their couches on a lazy Saturday every month, get them up and moving in our Houston community, show others how grateful we are for Jesus’ love and show it to others through acts of service. Each of you should use [...]

When I was asked to write a short statement on my experience of being in a LIFT group and studying Scripture+Shared with my group, I actually looked forward to telling the story. And then came Hurricane Harvey and the events of the last weeks have reinforced even more why small groups are so important at St. Luke’s.If you wanted the standard story, you would hear from me about theological learnings and the shaping of my own beliefs through studying and discussing the lessons with our group. You would hear from me about how, even as the “leader”, I learn [...]

Helpers came in many forms to rescue Texans in Harvey’s wake. In the beginning, they were Texans helping Texans, however, with the arrival of the Cajun Navy we quickly transitioned into Americans helping Americans. We all sat in horror as we watched our friends being rescued from their rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters and wept tears of joy as we watched caravans of police cars from across the country come in to relieve our exhausted first responders. It was a different type of caravan that descended on St Luke’s UMC. Red Cross volunteers from almost every state, including [...]

Robert and I are active members of the Fellowship Class. It is our Sunday morning home. Our class consists of families with children of all ages. We, like many other families at St. Luke's, are very involved in our children's activities and it makes non-Sunday gatherings quite a challenge at times. That is, until Harvey. As the roads dried up and the reality of the destruction set in, we all had one goal —to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Immediately. In addition, there are only so many days of cabin fever you can take when you [...]

When disaster strikes, the church responds, and when your church is located in the heart of some of the most diverse communities in one of the nation’s largest cities, it responds quickly. Gethsemane and their neighbors in Sharpstown and Gulfton are on higher ground, so flooding was not their main concern. But they did have another problem. Many of their congregation depends on hourly wages to make ends meet, and they couldn’t get to work. Add to that HISD shutting down for an additional week, and you see a pretty difficult financial situation. The Christian Community Service Center [...]

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 Hurricanes have a unique wind field. The primary circulation is the rotational part of the flow; it is purely circular. Harvey’s wide swath of destruction arrived as rain bands lashed around [...]