A creative collaboration between Trinity United Methodist Church and Sellwood Faith Community

Our new church start is all about connecting with new people.  I'm amazed at some of the responses I get from people who are already part of the church when I talk about connecting with others.  It seems like what we are doing is such an odd concept to...

I am tired. I wake up tired. I go to bed tired. I feel like a new parent struggling with insufficient sleep while undertaking a task that is both hugely important and somewhat mundane. Life is full of setting up the house, setting up the ministry, hosting visitors,...

I have been a new church start pastor now for 6 days.  Oddly I think I was better at it before I officially began.  I'm going to say that moving and sorting out our house are important reasons why I have not been out making connections much this week. The...

Lymphoma cellsThis past week has been unusual to say the least.  I have found myself in unexpected places talking about unexpected things.  Our orderly plans to move and to say good bye to our friends have been truncated.  Life has shifted...

The new guest bed for those of you who will be visiting us one of these days!This weekend we loaded up the new minivan and headed north.  Paige had a half day at school on Friday and Jeff was headed up to Tacoma for Convo on Saturday so it seemed the perfect time...

Here, have a sunrise, because it's an awesome metaphor for beginning again.My plan in starting this blog was to write one every week until we moved to Portland and then to write at least weekly or more often as things progressed.  It has been many weeks since my...

I came home on a recent Friday to a large stack of packages on the front door step.  One box was Paige’s Easter goodies from her Grandpa Bud in Chicago.  The other two boxes held books.  One box was stuff for our upcoming trip to Scotland and Ireland,...

Something completely breathtaking and wonderful happened today.  The community got together and decided that they needed to say thank you to the church I currently serve for the work we have done in this community.  The school board sent us a thank you note...

As the news of our new community has spread among our colleagues, friends, and family it’s clear that while many of you are happy for us and excited about this ministry,  you also think we are a bit crazy.  You are right.  Starting with not much; a...

In the weeks since our announcement I’ve had tons of questions about how we got the idea to do this.  The answer is that we think it’s divinely inspired and that this inspiration has partially come through all the people who have been part of our journey.The...