by Casey Greene SDB Church, Berlin, NY This summer I had the privilege of being part of SCSC. There were many wonderful — and challenging — aspects of my project, but the aspect of church family and the role they play sticks out the most. I have always loved how my church, and the denomination as a whole, always felt like a family. However, this summer I...

Sep 22, 2016

by Daniel Lovelace I want to ask you a bit of a strange and maybe obvious, yet sincere question: How would you live differently if you were dead? How would situations and circumstances affect you? How would people affect you? Let’s say someone talks bad about you, causing people to think ill towards you. Say another steals something of yours, or someone else...

by Rebecca Olson Tolerance. It’s a sticky, ambiguous word. If we are going to talk about an ambiguous word, we need to start by agreeing on a definition. There seem to be at least two distinct meanings that we can give the word tolerance. First, there is worldly tolerance, which declares truth to be subjective: I have no authority to say that what you believe...

Sep 22, 2016

by Philip Lawton There is a passage in the Gospel of Matthew which we often look over. (If I am honest there are quite a few!) It comes right after the Lord’s Prayer, right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. In this passage Jesus tells us that if we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. Yes, you heard me right. Most people when they hear this...

by Rob Appel Executive Director On July 22, 2016, I wrote on my Facebook page the following: “I would appreciate it if all of my Facebook friends would check out things before they post them. We are all too quick to post something that we believe is true, without checking if it is true or not. Thank you! Also, we are posting things about one person we...

by Donna VanHorn “Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost in his poem “Mending Wall.” It was written while Frost lived on his family’s farm in New Hampshire. My husband’s a New England native, and appreciates the practicality of stone walls. They were the tangible result of the region’s earliest settlers’ efforts to clear the land for farming. As...

By Annie Lloyd Alfred Station SDB Church, NY As teenagers, exploring out of our comfort zones is not an easy thing to do. We tend to create our own little worlds with the intention to never leave them. Why do we do this? Well, the term “comfort zone” is pretty self-explanatory. We like our comfort zones. Our comfort zones know us best, and they give us exactly...

Sep 22, 2016

by Rev. Nicholas J. Kersten Director of Education and History   One of the greatest pleasures I have had in doing the Historical work of our Conference is the aid we are able to provide researchers of various kinds in their inquiries about Seventh Day Baptists. Many requests are about our earliest churches in North America and Europe, and thanks to the...