St. Luke’s continues to partner with families in the Houston area as we work together to rebuild our community! Last week, a team served with a family living on the west side of Houston, in the Energy Corridor.This family requested help spreading topsoil in their front yard. The homeowner said, “This may seem like a strange request with the many priorities we have (mold remediation, plumbing, electrical and structural damages to name a few) but driving up to our home and walking through a yard of clay speckled with glass and broken tile is so difficult.” This sweet family—including [...]

In February 2015, I decided it was time to find a church for my family. I grew up in Houston and spent my childhood very involved in my neighborhood Methodist church. I participated in about everything it had to offer from Sunday School to choir and being an acolyte. My parents instilled in me and my siblings a solid foundation to start our journey with Jesus. In college and most of my young adult life, I remained spiritual but sporadically attended church. I was building a career, moving to different cities and just got busy. That all changed [...]

Thankfully, my family and our home were spared the wrath of Hurricane Harvey. However, my grandmother died in mid-September, and her passing felt all the more heartbreaking after the difficult weeks we had all just endured. Reflecting on what a wonderful Nana she was, my thoughts turned toward the beautiful Christmas stocking she made for my daughter. She worked on it months before Tessa was born so that it would be ready for her first Christmas. It is a family treasure. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks... families who lost everything in Harvey also [...]

Twelve stalwarts braved the heat and humidity on a Saturday morning at the monthly gardening and clean-up project at St. Luke’s Gethsemane Campus. It was a varied bunch. Young volunteers sharing family time with father or mother, plus older volunteers like me from organizations like Christian Community Service Center (CCSC), St. Luke’s and other churches.  A young man named Josh from a local Baptist church arrived early like me. He would do the “heavy lifting” later with wheelbarrow and tons of dirt that needed to be shifted. Everyone had an ebullient spirit and we got to work. Some [...]

From the time I was born, I have been so fortunate to be surrounded by people that have shared the love of Jesus with me. I grew up in a Christian household and was very involved in my home church in Louisiana — active in the mission and outreach group, participated in children’s and youth ministry, and was formed by leaders who took the time to disciple me and encourage my faith. When I went away to college, one of the things that grounded me was campus ministry. During my time at SMU, I led and organized Bible [...]

“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 [...]