10 Reasons Why I Became a United Methodist Minister
Rev. Stephanie Vader
• I love God, and I love people. Somehow being a minister made these two things come together.
• I believe, like Jesus, that sacrificial generosity is the most powerful force for good in the world.
• I like getting into deep theological discussions at parties, after Yoga class, at the hair salon, with my doctors, etc...
• I want to be able to ask people, “How is [...] More...

Great is thy faithfulness
Rev. Stephanie Vader
Preached at Emmanuel UMC on Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Years ago I read a story about a man and his son who were fishing in Atlantic City and caught a plastic bag containing 300 letters written to God. Most of them were unopened. With a little investigation it was discovered that a recently deceased pastor in New Jersey had invited people to mail their prayers to God to his church where [...] More...

Sermon: The Gospel On Broadway: Les Miserables / Rev. Stephanie Vader
Preached at Emmanuel UMC on Sunday, January 29th, 2012

There is a gone-wrong-ness about our life. This gone-wrongness challenges our belief in the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, maybe even our own goodness.
Every religion, philosophy, political theory, psychology and sociology wrestles with it. Call it:

estrangement
alienation
suffering
evil
sin.
We experience it as loss, as the [...] More...

Sermon: Worship Fully

Sunday, November 27^th, 2011

Rev. Stephanie Vader

Mental health workers tell us that their busiest season is around Christmas. Our expectations of our families and ourselves are high and often unattainable. I think we sometimes try way to hard to make Christmas merry. Robert Fulghum, a Unitarian Minister and writer, told a story about how he tried to assemble a merry Christmas and how he succeeded in [...] More...

Sermon Thoughts on the Occupy Movement

November 20^th, 2011

Rev. Stephanie Vader

 

Here are some of the things being said about the occupy wall street movement.

 

“In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party. Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from [...] More...

by. Rev. Vader

My cousin is an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) Pastor and at a recent family gathering we talked about some of arguments that are made in the debate about whether openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be ordained in the ELCA church. 

My cousin told me about one of the arguments that was made by Rev. Nestingen ( an ELCA pastor) who argued [...] More...

Rev. Stephanie Vader 

The French anthropologist and theologian Renè Girard coined the phrase mimetic desire to suggest that we learn to desire certain things by imitating the desire of others. Place two small children in a room with a toy neither have seen. One child begins to play with the toy. Suddenly, the other child wants the toy too. His desire is sparked by the other child’s interest. Or open a [...] More...

What is a true Christian?

Your answer:_______________________________________________________________.

 

Recently the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas called Rick Perry a “true Christian” and denounced the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney as a cult, by which I’m guessing he meant to conjure up scary images of something bizarre and beyond the bounds of normality. He didn’t offer a definition of a “true Christian”, assuming [...] More...

By Rev. Stephanie Vader
Preached on Sunday, October 16^th, 2011

The way the dog trots out the front door
Every morning
Without a hat or an umbrella,
Without any money
Or even the keys to her doghouse
Never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
With milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
Of a life without encumbrance-
Thoreau in his curtain less hut< [...] More...

Rev. Stephanie Vader

“I do want to point out, friends, that time is of the essence. There is no time to waste, so don’t complicate your lives unnecessarily. Keep it simple — in marriage, grief, joy, whatever. Even in ordinary things—your daily routines of shopping, and so on. Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way [...] More...