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Grow In Preaching By Pastor Lee Hemen June 30, 2023 One of things that has always frustrated me as a Christian and a pastor is that far too many pastors think they do not have to mature in their preaching skills. They will pound their pulpits to try and get their listeners to mature in their faith practices of prayer, Bible reading, witnessing and biblical knowledge but never address their own shortcoming of truly stagnant preaching. I was shocked when I went to listen to a fellow pastor preach and his style was exactly the same as when he graduated from seminary some thirty years ago! There are few pastors who would desire their congregations to remain spiritually stunted for thirty years, yet find no problem with their own stunted growth in being able to preach the word of God that truly meets the needs of their listeners today. This should not happen. Pastors often preach on what Paul wrote Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not nee...

Ramblings from Retirement – Reconnect! By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 18, 2021 There was a popular folk song out when I was in High School by Joni Mitchell called The Big Yellow Taxi. It was supposed to be a statement concerning how the world was paving over everything and destroying it with insecticides. It was kind of a silly song but one line states “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” This is true whether it concerns green spaces or relationships but it can be true of things we begin to depend on in life without ever thinking about them. Here’s something for you to try for a week: Go without your Wi-Fi or cell phone. Few could make it a day let alone a week, but what if these things were taken away from you for good? What would you do and how would you cope? We lost our Wi-Fi for about 20 hours the other day and I realized just how much we as a family had come to rely on something we often took for granted. We can do the same thing in...

Reflections on 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 - Thanks--giving By Lee Hemen (Retired Pastor) November 26, 2020 "Since the "Mayflower" had left England nine weeks behind schedule, the New World's harsh weather threatened their very survival... Winter took its toll. Journal entries feature the same melancholy theme week after week, for months on end: "... Aboute noone, it began to raine ... at night, it did freeze & snow ... still the cold weather continued ... very wet and rainy, with the greatest gusts of wind ever we saw ... frost and foule weather hindered us much; this time of the yeare seldom could we worke half the week." That winter more than half the heads of households perished. Aboard ship only five of eighteen wives lived through the ravages of scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. An entry for March 24th reads: "This month thirteen of our number die. And in three months past dies halfe our company ... Of a hundred persons, scarce fifty remain, the ...

How God grows his church! – Ephesians 4:11-16 By Pastor Lee Hemen February 9, 2020 Family is important. It is important because it is the foundation for a stable society. This is why families that are secure, stable, and functional are a necessity. And it explains why our society is so fractured, insecure, and dysfunctional. Healthy relationships and a healthy view of self is where and how we as individuals have healthy lives, learn to function, and mature. It is how we grow. I have shared before that the church is a sacred thing that we as Baptists often take for granted. The reason we do is because like most evangelicals we think that church is about us and that is should meet our needs and make us feel better when in fact that is not what a church is supposed to be at all. Church is not a social club, fraternity, or a secret society. It is where we as believers are to develop a healthy spirituality, learn to function, and mature. Let’s learn how God grows his church… READ: Ephesians...

Believers will be ill-treated! - Matthew 10:16-25 By Pastor Lee Hemen November 3, 2019 In today’s politically correct climate individuals can feel threatened by anything, everything, and anyone. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, then you have a personal right to whine about it and make a spectacle of yourself concerning your hurt feelings. It makes one wonder what these same wilting Willies would do if they were truly persecuted. Jesus knew that his message was not and would not be popular with the established religious leadership. And in fact they would do anything to silence it and its messengers including lying, threatening, and imprisoning those who dared share it. Evil does not like to be exposed and the world was enshrouded in evil. I believe this is why there are those who are emboldened in our day and age to not just disagree with the gospel message but to personally persecute in any way possible anyone who dares to try and share it. Jesus knew believers would be persecuted; ...

John the baptizer – Matthew 3:1-12 By Pastor Lee Hemen January 20, 2019 Everyone is known for something. Notice I did not say that everyone is famous, well-known, or publicly recognizable. But each of usually is known for something. When I was in elementary school I was known for organizing all of the younger grades into a force to be reckoned with on the playground. You pick on one of us, we all attacked you. It stopped bullying in its tracks. I was surprised years later when this guy at Portland State University asked me if I was the same Lee Hemen who organized that group because he was one of the younger kids we “rescued”! Here we discover John, and no, he was not the first Baptist, rather he is known for his baptisms. He should be known correctly as John the Baptizer. We will discover that not everyone follows the normal dictates of social decorum or dress and John was one of these folks. He was not homeless as I have heard some liberal preachers try to emphasize; he was a man wit...

Condemned by conformity! -- 2 Kings 14:8-14; 15:10, 13-14, 16 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 28, 2018 I used to go fishing for crawdads. As we caught them we would put them in a bucket of water. As the bucket got full of crawdads they would try to crawl out but the ones trying to get out were pulled back in by others trying to get out. As parents we warn are children about the influence of peer pressure. Peer pressure can be just like those crawdads that pulled others back into the bucket. I have learned however that peer pressure does not end in childhood, it continues into our adult life. There are those in our Christian lives who try to pull us back into conformity rather than live the lives God desires. 2 Kings 14–15 contains a brief history of the reigns of 3 kings over Judah and 6 kings over Israel. Their reigns were characteristic of life in Judah and in Israel. The reigns of the kings of Judah did okay but they compromised God’s requirements. They allowed people to offer sac...

Look with faith! – 2 Kings 6:8-22 By Pastor Lee Hemen September 30, 2018 There are those men and women who look beyond their circumstances in life and see God working right in the midst of every situation. I would like to think that I am such a person but I confess this is not always the case. However in those times when it is difficult for me to see the hand of God working in my life I am reminded of this incident in the life of Elisha and kind of find comfort in how he deals with his servant. The reason I do is because more often than not I am like Elisha’s servant and I need to learn to look with faith. When the king of Aram sent a large military contingent against Elisha, the prophet did not fear because he saw by faith that God had sent him protection and help. God had provided a large spiritual contingent that was more powerful than even the Aramean army. God protected Elisha when the Aramean king sent his forces to surround Dothan and capture Elisha and in the process taught tho...

Pollution - Jude 1:1-16 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 6, 2018 I always laugh when the media does a story on pollution and they show pictures of steam coming from “smoke” stacks. Few realize that there are very few real “smoke” stacks within the US and Canada and this is why the media has to use billows of steam in order to make you think it is smoke. It’s like when they would write dire warnings about radiation from nuclear power plants and they would show us pictures of the water cooling towers and the huge plumes of steam coming from them. Is there pollution? Does it occur today? Absolutely! And there is also a spiritual pollution that is just as harmful that many do not realize has affected the way they think about the Bible, salvation, and even Jesus. Most of the New Testament writers had experienced spiritual pollution firsthand. Jude, Jesus’ brother, meets this contamination head on and dramatically reveals it for what it truly is. Let’s discover for ourselves what he wrote concerning ...

Being Faithful - Malachi 2:10-16 By Pastor Lee Hemen March 25, 2018 AM After learning to say, “No!” we quickly learn to ask the question, “Why?” It is an innate thing with us and it goes back to the Garden of Eden when Eve rebelled and then asked the very same question. It exists in every preschooler and manifests itself in adolescence through our demand to be told the reason for everything that happens to us. We especially hate it when someone dares to tell us, “Because I said so, that’s why!” We want and expect an answer to our inquiry. But guess what? The simple truth is, we do not deserve an answer for every “Why?” we ask, nor should we expect one. In God’s economy trust is manifested when we obey without asking “Why?” When we pridefully think God should justify himself to us God reminds us that his ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts. He desires his children to live by faith and trust. Israel had failed to do just that. Instead they came up with their own way ...