Healing and Wholeness in the Kingdom of God
I preached this sermon on February 23, 2013 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Hackettstown, NJ. I was born in West Virginia and raised in a small town in the mountains of Appalachia in western Maryland called “Westernport”. The sense of community that we had was incredibly strong. Indeed, I did not even realize how…
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Is Worry Sinful?
I preached this sermon on August 26, 2012 at Trinity UMC in Hackettstown, NJ. When I was a boy, my mother had the Serenity Prayer at the edge of one of our mirrors. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. It’s attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr and goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept…
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Gone Fishin’
I preached this sermon on July 22, 2012 at Trinity United Methodist Church, Hackettstown, NJ. When I learned that I would be delivering the final sermon in Frank’s fishing sermon series I thought about trying to switch to avoid the topic. I’m not much of a fisherman. I don’t have the patience required and never…
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Faithful Doubters
(This is the sermon I delivered on June 24, 2012 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Hackettstown, NJ. It includes a personal story that I have used in one other sermon previously, The Witness of Friends. It was just too perfect a match for the Gospel lesson not to use it again. I hope you…
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Kingdom Alignment: My Plans And Desires
Reading Time 3.5 Minutes “God bless my plan.” For a very long time I have said this mockingly as an example of exactly the type of prayer we should not pray. Living a Christian life requires us to surrender our lives to Christ, which means we live according to his plan and not ours. I…
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Getting the Message
The grocery seems to be a place where I find the Kingdom more easily. My most recent experience occurred a few days ago. As I entered the checkout line I saw that the young woman bagging the groceries had an almost rigid mask for her face. That was when I could see her face at…
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New Release Contributes to the Popular Appalachian Literature Genre
“Over the past couple of decades, Appalachian literature has developed a strong and close relationship with independent publishing, showing the latter to be an important medium for the expression for Appalachian voice,” writes Kristopher Clifford in a master’s thesis in 2007. A new release, Former Things Forgotten, by Thomas Trezise, published by the hybrid Redemption…
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Pray Like Tevya
In high school, I had roles in two productions of Broadway musicals. I didn’t even sing, but they gave me the bug. Since then I’ve had a love affair with Broadway. One of my favorite musicals is Fiddler on the Roof. If you are unfamiliar with it, the musical tells the story of a Jewish…
Read More Welcome, I'm Tom
I'm Tom Trezise a retired lawyer and corporate executive with over twenty years of experience as a Methodist lay preacher. Raised in Appalachia, I proudly call myself a hillbilly at heart. I'm the executive director of The Everyday Kingdom, a non-profit devoted to fostering a community that helps people find and experience the peace, purpose, and joy available from living every day in Christ’s kingdom.
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