Pleasant Grove Christian Church

10/09/2026

Thanks Karen Belknap for this

10/05/2026

Absolutely

Today, on World Teachers’ Day, we celebrate the educators who challenge us to think deeper, discover our voices, and recognize the possibilities within ourselves.

While Dr. Maya Angelou is remembered worldwide as a poet, author, performer, and civil rights activist, she also deeply valued another title: teacher.

Dr. Angelou joined the faculty of Wake Forest University in 1982 as the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies. Over the decades, she taught courses spanning poetry, literature, race, culture, and the humanities, inspiring generations of students both inside and beyond the classroom.

Reflecting on her calling, she once said: “I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.”

For Dr. Angelou, education was never simply about what you could learn from a textbook. Her classroom encouraged students to question, think critically, defend their ideas, encounter different perspectives, and recognize their shared humanity.

Her own approach to life was rooted in a lesson passed down to her early: “When you get, give. When you learn, teach.”

Today, we honor Dr. Angelou’s legacy as an educator and all of the teachers who continue to give what they have learned, helping shape the thinkers, creators, leaders, and teachers of tomorrow.

Tag a teacher who made a lasting impact on your life. ❤️

10/03/2026

When everything …

Pierce Brosnan is known around the world as James Bond, but behind the fame is a story of profound loss and enduring faith.
In 1991, his first wife, Cassandra Harris, died from ovarian cancer after years of illness. Brosnan has spoken openly about how his Catholic faith and prayer helped carry him through that grief. Years later, he would also lose his adopted daughter Charlotte to the same disease.

Reflecting on his faith, Brosnan once said:
“Prayer helped me with the loss of my wife to cancer… Now prayer helps me to be a father, to be an actor and to be a man.” Wikiquote
He explained that, for him, the foundation remained “God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith,” adding that his faith had sustained him through moments of suffering, doubt and fear.

Even the man who played one of cinema’s most famously self-reliant characters acknowledged that there are moments when human strength is not enough.

Sometimes strength means knowing where to turn when everything else falls away.

10/03/2026

Steve Brown. Key Life

09/29/2026

This we have always done

It seems a growing number of churches are recovering the practice—never entirely lost, but not as popular as it used to be—of singing from books.

Hymnals offer perceived permanence and stability in a musical landscape that changes quickly and often. The decision to reintroduce congregations to hymnals is often an ideological one, especially for churches that made the transition away from them in recent decades.

But a notable number of churches are making that choice, choosing the printed page over lyrics projected onto a screen.

Dan Kreider, a composer, arranger, and music minister who designed The Sing! Hymnal said hymnals aren’t going to replace projection or any of the tech tools that undergird contemporary worship music. But they offer something valuable and different.

“If you’re in a church that just goes with the most popular songs, where is your sense of permanence? Think of the kids growing up in your church. Where is their sense of permanence? What songs are they going to remember and sing as they age? The hymnal slows us down,” Kreider said.

From the CT archive: https://chrst.today/40vKC36

09/26/2026

Trusting

I refuse to let what I lack make me forget what I already have.

I have another breath.

Another sunrise.

Another opportunity to walk with Jesus.

And that alone is enough reason to give thanks.

God has been too faithful for me to doubt Him now.

The same God who carried me through yesterday will sustain me today and lead me into tomorrow.