Rev. Dr. Steven Voris
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneJanuary 14, 2026In their 2023 book, The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham point out that 40 million adults used to go to church in the United States but no longer do. They list a plethora of reasons people used for quitting church, including bad experiences with church leadership, mingling of faith and politics, loss of faith, simply not looking for a new church after a move, intolerance of…
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneDecember 09, 2025Like most Christian pastors, I was frustrated with the commercialization of Christmas and the lack of spiritual meaning expressed during the holiday, UNTIL I served as a U.S. Navy Chaplain and understood, for the first time, that there is more than one correct way to celebrate Christmas. After all, President Ulysses S. Grant made Christmas a Federal Holiday in 1870, the only U.S. Federal Holiday…
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneJune 25, 2025“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16) This is No. 9 on the list of things God hates most; that list being the Ten Commandments. Most often, this commandment is framed in a legal context of testifying falsely in court, but there are many additional ways people can bear false witness against a neighbor. All of those ways involve lying. Lying is the core sin in…
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneApril 02, 2025I’ve been thinking a lot about parables these days. Parables have mostly been neglected as a genre of literature through the centuries, even though Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity have used parables to promote spiritual transformation in the hard of heart. Parables function most effectively when they “shock” people into the realization that what they have previously thought and done…
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneJanuary 08, 2025We celebrated the passing of another year on the Gregorian calendar last week, which has been the standard measure for recording the passage of time since 1582. The Gregorian calendar was an improvement over the Julian calendar which went into effect in the Roman Empire on January 1, 45 BCE. If the goal of a calendar is to keep the solstice and equinox dates the same, so that a year is…
- By Rev. Dr. Steven Voris, First Presbyterian Church, LuverneOctober 23, 2024Halloween is approaching. That’s good and all. I’ll probably eat too much leftover Halloween candy and help the grandchildren with their costumes. Anything involving grandchildren and fun can’t be all bad. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend $11.6 billion on Halloween this year. That averages to about $103.63 per family, making Halloween the second biggest American…
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