About Joel

Welcome to my sermon blog! I am married to Michelle, and together we are the parents of four kids, two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren.  I pastor a great church in Lancaster, PA, and I teach Bible and theology courses as an adjunct professor. Michelle is co-director CV SEEDS, with a mission to support people in our community in the vital areas of housing, education, and health.  All of these things color our lives with vibrant strokes.  If you catch me in a free moment, I’ll probably be reading a book, running with my dog, hanging out with our family and friends around a campfire or enjoying a movie or TV show with Michelle.

On this blog, I post the sermons I preach at Faith Church. My weekly posting schedule starts on Saturdays with a preview post. Each of those preview posts are from emails I send to the church family on Fridays, introducing them to the sermon that I’ll give that Sunday. The following week on the blog, I splice my sermon into five parts, posting one part each day, Monday through Friday, as a kind of daily devotional.

Typically, I preach through books of the Bible, start to finish, and from time to time I preach topical series. In recent years, I’ve preached through Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, the Gospel of John, and the Acts of the Apostles. Search the blog and you’ll find series through a variety of shorter biblical books, from both the Old and New Testaments.

One Sunday per quarter, I pause my current sermon series and preach a Current Events or Q & A sermon. For the Current Events sermons I try to select an issue or event making headlines and apply biblical theology to it. I want to help people think Christianly about our world. For the Q & A sermons, I invite my congregation to ask any questions on their minds, and like the current events sermons, I try to answer those questions with biblical theology. You’ll find those Current Events and Q & A post on the blog.

Because I preach 40 of 52 Sundays, guest teachers fill in about once per month. If they continue the sermon series, I will include their sermons on the blog.

You can purchase my book Flourishing in Community: A Theology of Togetherness on my publisher Wipf and Stock’s website or on Amazon.

I also invite you to subscribe to my Substack, where I write about other topics!

If you’re ever in the Lancaster area, stop by Faith Church!