Now Dan found himself holding his breath while he waited for the boat and Trevor to pop up again. There were no more docks after this one so everything should have been fine. He should pop up and swim to the edge; except this time neither the boat nor Trevor popped up. They had been pushed down and trapped in the cables under the dock. Trevor was being held against the boat with the force of the water pushing against him. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was right-side up. He didn’t know if he could get away from the boat and, if he did, he wasn’t sure which direction to swim. He was panicking and quickly running out of air.

When Julie first showed me how to use a real camera, not just a cardboard disposable film camera, but a legitimate SLR Canon with a fancy lens, one of the things I had to learn was how to focus the shot. With autofocus, you look for where to place a little yellow box, then half-press the main button to cause the camera to focus on that spot, rather than focusing on a mountain in the distant background, or the grass in the foreground. Many phone cameras have a similar feature: tap on the screen where you want to focus. This is important because if you don’t focus on the right thing, the picture won’t turn out right. Focus on the bright sunset, and none of the faces show up. Focus on the distant grizzly bear attacking the overly curious tourist at Yellowstone, and your family members, who you actually wanted in the picture, will be fuzzy and out of focus.

In the early summer of 1968, Richard Proenneke looked down from a prop plane window, gazing at the placid lake where he would soon begin his year-long adventure. The plane touched down on the remote Alaskan body of water, glided to the shore, and spilled him and his contents onto the bank where he would spend the next four months building his own cabin with hand tools. Then, he would spend the remainder of a year living on his own in the Alaskan wilderness, where the nearest neighbor would be over 50 miles away. His plan was to spend an entire year there surviving by his own hands. Of course this would require a tremendous amount of ability, skill, fortitude, and a significant measure of introvertedness. He brought film cameras and movie cameras to document the experience, in fact, you can read his journals and watch the documentary created from what he captured. It might seem that he was a man completely independent and able to depend on himself solely for his existence. 

In July we are focused on our 2026 theme “Walk by Faith.” Sunday, Perris Jones shared with us about his journey of faith, how God guided him through one challenge after another throughout his life. I was at the UofL vs UVA game when Perris was paralyzed. It was a scary moment for everyone in the stadium. You never want to see that happen to a promising young athlete with his whole life ahead of him. They wheeled him off the field and the game went on and, it’s sad to say, but I didn’t think much about him after that till I saw the news story that he had walked (by faith) out of U of L Hospital three weeks later. His life had radically changed, but for the rest of us, life just went on.

No matter where we’ve lived (Arkansas, Phoenix, South Pacific), or how long we lived there, whenever someone asked where we were from, we always answered “Kentucky.” When God called us to serve at Valley View, it was a homecoming that we’ve relished since. Over the last few months I’ve had a number of pastor friends come to visit and many are jealous to hear me talk of all the friendships and connections to this community. I can drive down just about any road between home and church and have a flood of memories from the people and places that inhabit the homes and businesses in the Southend. 

This Sunday we plan to celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary. We will have apple crisp at 10am, so come early and wear your best red-white-and-blue outfit. I’m glad we get to celebrate this momentous anniversary together. In fact, I think the most powerful way anyone could celebrate America’s 250th is by gathering to worship. I’m so grateful that we live in a country that has freedom of worship in its founding principles. For 250 years Christians have not had to worry about gathering publicly to worship Jesus. As we gather this Sunday and look at Laodicea, the seventh and final church in our Churches of Revelation series, we will also pray that our nation and our church grow in faithfulness to Jesus Christ in all that we do.

This week our students are away at camp. I loved camp as well, but my favorite trips to take during my youth group days here at Valley View were the backpacking trips. Kerry Jones, our student pastor at the time, would take a group of boys out into the Red River Gorge, or Big South Fork, or the Smokies, and teach us how to camp and hike and carry all our gear. One of the essential skills was learning to build a fire and learning the importance of oxygen to fan the flame. In the early life of a fire, when just a little wisp of a flame has begun, if you blow gently, it nudges it along quite well.

It was hard to hear that I was the kind of person who could “dish it out but not take it.” That experience has often served as a powerful reminder that we all have blind spots. In fact, if you think you don’t have a blind spot, that is what we call a blind spot. People have blind spots, and so do churches (since a church is just a collection of people, all with their own tendencies and traits and blind spots). This is part of the reason why working through the letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapters two and three is so powerful. We see Christ confronting the tendencies of seven different churches, exposing their blind spots, and calling them to correction and a renewed commitment to following Christ. We will relate to some churches better than others, but it’s important to have ‘ears to hear’ with every message given in Scripture. The minute you think, “that’s not me… I don’t struggle with that,” that should be a red flag that maybe there is a hint of a blind spot. At least we should pray that God would protect us from pride in any area of strength, and help us to walk in repentance in areas of weakness.

It was the summer of 1938, and Lula Tyree sat on her porch and pondered the spiritual situation of her neighbors. The nearest churches were a long drive either direction, so how would they learn about Jesus? Who would reach them? She looked out across the winding country road that passed by her house, seeing the sprawling farm that sat serenely in front of her, and she commented to her neighbor there with her, “I believe God is calling us to start a Sunday School.” And so it was that Lula’s little step of faith, and her burden for children, eventually became Valley View Church. What started 88 years ago, the intentional investing in children, is still at the heart of our church today.

In the summer of 1985, Elliot Tepper moved his wife and four young sons to the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. His mission was to start a church, to reach out to the community and share the love of Christ. He knocked on every door he could, and no one responded. Within just a few weeks it was clear that God had closed the door he thought would be his mission field for life. 

But then he began to notice something. There were all kinds of people around him every day who needed the Gospel, people easily accessible to him. He hadn’t seen them before because he was busy stepping over them on his way to knock on a door, or as he meandered down the street toward his home.