HOW CAN I SERVE YOU?

PTCUMC Family,The last two Sundays have been incredible, and it has been so much fun to meet so many new people!  Thank you for welcoming my family- Margaret, Charlotte and Jackson- into the membership of this church.  You have already been a blessing to our family! If you were able to join us for one or both of the last …

WILLING TO GO

Thank you so much for the extraordinary welcome that was extended to my family last Sunday! It was a phenomenal celebration, and it was exciting to meet so many new faces.  I’ve heard from more than a couple of you about how fun it was to reconnect with old friends and see new faces as well.  It’s a great time …

Australian Wisdom

Many years ago, I heard a sermon by an Australian evangelist. I only remember one thing from that message (read this in an Aussie accent if you can):  “I don’t know why you Americans are always complaining. You live in the greatest country in the world!” I can’t remember anything else, but that thought stuck with me. It’s an interesting …

Love Him By Loving Them

One of my favorite passages in all of scripture is found in Matthew 22.  I love it for two reasons: first, it’s simple and clear.  All too often the Bible is anything but simple and clear, so I’m always excited to come upon those rare occasions that the teaching is plainly stated and clearly communicated. Second, Jesus manages to articulate …

Who We Are Called to Be

You are not alone. You are part of a movement, a community, and a family that is so much bigger than you could have ever imagined. We are halfway through our sermon series, Ekklesia: who the church is called to be. Ekklesia is a Greek word that is typically translated as “church” in English. It is derived from the verb ekkaleo, which means …

The Ark | Above and Beyond

When you get the safety briefing before the airplane, one of the things they tell you is to “Put on your own oxygen mask before you assist others”. When they say it, it’s common sense, right?  I can’t imagine anyone of us have been in an airplane when we needed to use the oxygen masks, but if you have a …

Rev. Matt Stone | Call To Ministry

Greetings, PTCUMC!  I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to get to know you as a church!  As we live into this season of transition, and as a way to begin getting to know each other, I thought it might be helpful for you to hear a little about my call to ministry.   As a young …

REJOICING

I saw something last weekend I’d never seen before. My daughter, Dori, is a soccer player. We occasionally travel for soccer tournaments and we ended up in a tournament in Lilburn. The fields at this park backed up to a hill covered in various vines and they had either rented or borrowed goats and sheep to eat away at the vines. I …

Only From A Distance

“Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance…” Deuteronomy 32:52 Pastoring is a hard job. Of course, it’s not the only hard job in the world. Hospital nurses, teachers, and police officers have it pretty rough, too. There are plenty of people in the world whose vocation is a heavy load. But pastoring is hard.  For one thing, …

To My Beloved Faith Family

Ecclesiastes 3:1 NRSV For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…. Forty years ago from this coming Monday (May 16) – beside Pactola Lake in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota – a young man named Mark invited a young woman named Shannon to go on the adventure of life with him. She …