Hans Googer - Page 3 of 32 - Sometimes I Write

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019

A Little Past the F-260 Quarter Pole

At Genesis, we are going through the F-260 together. This is a Bible reading plan put out by the great folks at Replicate Ministries. The plan covers five days of reading, generally two chapters per day, and goes through the story of Scripture chronologically.

Along with the reading plan, we are memorizing passages together as a church, and I am preaching a passage every Sunday that we’ve read the prior week (a strategy the Replicate folks had discussed as a way to get more people motivated to stick with the reading plan).

You can see a glimpse of how all that fits together on our website. Now that we are a little more than three months into 2019, I wanted to give a few thoughts on how the process has been.

April 18, 2019April 19, 2019

Working Hard in God’s Grace

Note: This was supposed to go out tomorrow, but tomorrow is Good Friday and I decided to post it a day early. Enjoy.

So, without really planning it, this week has become a little series. It started more observationally than anything. On Monday, I wrote about how I did very little to be where I am—it was God’s doing. I followed that up on Wednesday with a post about why grace is such a difficult concept. I figured to try and conclude this accidental series today with a way to hold these ideas together—to provide some type of balance (even though I hate that phrase and view much of my life as imbalanced).

On the one hand I did little/nothing to be where I am. I am humbled regularly. The greatest gifts in life that I have received are really gifts form God (Jas 1:16-17). On the other hand I did do work of one kind or another. Jobs don’t work themselves. Degrees don’t earn themselves. Children don’t discipline themselves (though that would be nice). So what gives? How can we think about it?

April 17, 2019April 16, 2019

Why I Still Try and Say, “I Did It!”

Earlier this week, I wrote about how there is very little in this life that I actually did by my own strength. In fact, the things that perhaps I should be credited for are usually the things that go poorly. If I just slow down—if I just take time to reflect on where I am in life—I can see that it had little to do with my own power and might. With just a tiny bit of perspective I can see that my strength got me nowhere.

Why, then, do I still spend so much time taking credit for things that I had little hand in bringing about? Why do I have such pride in the things that “I” do? For the past three semesters I have been serving as a GTA (graduate teaching assistant) with an online class at Dallas Seminary. It’s one of the intro pastoral ministries classes and the content of that class has helped to remind me as to why I still try and take credit.

April 15, 2019April 16, 2019

I Can’t Really Ever Say, “I Did It”

Everything meaningful thing that exists in my life has little (almost nothing) to do with what the amount of work I put in. I’m not just talking about my salvation—I’m talking about basically everything.

I know that such a statement is true for everyone, but sometimes it feels more acute in pastoral ministry settings. (Again, I’m not talking about super Christian-y things, just normal everyday things.) Here are just a few thoughts that remind me that it will always be hard to say that I did anything of significance by myself.

April 10, 2019April 16, 2019

A New Podcast for You

“For you” is likely a stretch since nobody asked me to start a new podcast, but it felt better than saying “for me.” Yes, world, a new podcast has been in the works and I wanted to share it on the blog because that’s some of my connection back to the Louisiana world. Drumroll please . . .

About a month ago I was talking to my cousin Evan about the potential of starting a podcast. He and I talk a lot—always have—and have drastically different interests. At the same time, there’s always been enough similarity, mutual respect, and collegiality (is that the right word?) that we thought we could give it a run.

Click here for the episode

April 9, 2019April 9, 2019

Three Time Adjustments I’ve Had to Make

There has been a lot of adjusting going on in our house since moving to Texas in July of last year. It feels a bit funny to say that but it is true. Though I am living close to where I grew up (an irony not lost on me because it was never on my bucket list to live near home), there have been a lot of changes that have come along the way. One of the biggest ones for me—specifically in regard to how I pursue pastoral ministry—is regarding time.