This week, I was preaching on the importance of Christian Community through local church bodies. You will find the full talk on my web-site at www.tomhypes.com but this part is something I get asked about often so I thought I’d break it out as a blog. What do you do if you do not find […]

There is a video circulating called “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus”. You can see it here…. As I watched it, I started scrolling through the comments on the You Tube page to see how different people were reacting to it. When I did I noticed two things; how many people were commenting in […]

It’s always interesting when Christmas falls on a Sunday…. What does a church do? Do they still have services in the morning because that’s their tradition? Do they switch to another time feeling guilty that they are putting “family time” over “God time”? Do they cancel and do the whole service on DVD for people […]

Got a flyer from “Care for Pastors” the other day and it had some statistics about pastors that I thought others might be interested in. When I used to get things like this before I was a pastor, I thought they were a stretch. Now after more than 10 years and meeting and talking with […]

This weekend is Nation Donor Sabbath and we are celebrating this at our church this Sunday in a unique way! We are blessed to be hosting one of the Lifeline of Ohio representatives, Lauren Fitting, one of the traveling Lifeline Quilts, and hearing the testimony of a Marion area resident, Jim Eckard who is a […]

Recently, I put together some thoughts for the facilitators of the Home Groups at our church on how to build intimacy in our groups. I thought I might put them out here for others as well as solicit other ideas that I might not have thought of as of yet. – Ground Rules: The first […]

An old blog of mine but timely for the season…. What’s the best thing about October 31st? It’s my friend Monica’s birthday! (Just sucking up since I know she’ll read this). OK, let me say this first as I tackle this…this is A Christian’s perspective (my perspective not all Christians). A lot of people are […]

The church I pastor, The Shepherd’s Fellowship is having a special event on October 22, 2011 called “A Night at Matthew’s”. This is going to be a different type of event for us but will be filled with live music, catered food, fund raising to help “Bridges out of Poverty” and a wine tasting. Yes, […]

Last weekend, I was on sabbatical for a few days. Just some time out in the woods for some rest, family time, and solo Bible Study. One of the stories from the Scripture I revisited during this time was the story of Jacob in Genesis. As I read through it again, I caught something in […]

I was working through a Scripture for a sermon not too long ago and was encouraged by a particular passage I wanted to share. “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on […]