Friends, I am excited to announce that Opa’s Haus is about to become more active! By way of background it has been my intention for quite some time to publish more but as we all know too well, the exigencies of life can often derail the best plans.

For the last three years I have been actively publishing a “Thought for the Day” series of texts, emails, and voice messages for my church in Clarksdale. The effort began out of desperation at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic as I was trying various ways to maintain community during lockdowns, cancelled worship services and social distancing. One day after dropping off a batch of brownies and having conversation thru the door, one of my members said, “Brother Neville, you just don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.” Aside from being humbling, her comment got me thinking. As part of our merger the church was implementing a new Church Management System that included a mass communication module. I went back, did some research on its capabilities, and as they say, ‘the rest is history.’ Along the way as the audience grew to well beyond just church members the blog simply fell by the wayside.

And now it’s January 2024. We had come a long way since 2017 — merging two historic United Methodist Congregations, helping Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School get off the ground first by leasing them space and then by selling them one of our properties, navigating the waters of pandemic (which hit barely six months after our merger), and then going through the process of discernment that led to the decision to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church and become part of the Global Methodist Church. We accomplished much but the leadership in Clarksdale felt that it was time for a change.

After much prayer and discernment, God led us to Winona. Both Cathy and I are excited beyond measure to see what the future holds as we join the wonderful families of Moore Memorial Methodist Church and Bethlehem Methodist Church, both part of the newly formed Global Methodist Church.

I have been humbled by the number of requests to continue my “Thought for Today” and “Opa’s Haus” will become the jumping off point for a continued effort to include an increasingly wider audience where we can all work on letting God make more of us that we can make of ourselves. I hope you’ll join us on the journey and look forward to our time together! Come on down to Opa’s Haus and as the ending song from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ tv show said, “set a spell, take your shoes off, y’all come back now ya’ here.”

Be blessed today my Friends! And remember, God loves you and so do I.