Coppertop Sermons

A Dog Named Grace

I did not preach this morning. Thank you to Cody Nielsen, Chaplain and Executive Director of the Wesley Foundation at the University of Minnesota for preaching this morning at First UMC.

Here is the reflection I wrote for our upcoming May newsletter.

“Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us,

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“Like” Jesus

Sermon preached April 14, 2013

Text: John 21:1-19

A few months into my first pastorate, a young woman who was a member of my church came to me with a story that was causing her alarm. Proctor and Gamble had a symbol for its company back then – a bearded man in the moon looking

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Unknowing Knowing

Sermon preached April 7, 2013

Texts: John 20:19-31

The Wedding Song

If you were married in the 1970s or early 1980s, there is a good chance you had this song sung at your wedding – Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, “The Wedding Song.” As the song moves forward, Stookey sings a

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A Whole New Ballgame

Sermon preached Easter Sunday March 31, 2013

Texts: Luke 24:1-12

Here it is. What we have been waiting for. Yes, today is the day just before the beginning of the baseball season.
I have a long-standing love affair with baseball. Except for a few years of faithless inattention on my part, I have enjoyed baseball

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An Odd God

Good Friday March 29, 2013

Texts: The Passion Story in Tenebrae Service, United Methodist Book of Worship

Quite often, during funerals, memorial services, celebrations of life, there is a time when people who knew the person whose life’s end we are marking get an opportunity to share a story about the deceased. It has

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