Sunday, October 29, 2006

A Journey Along the Yellow Brick Road

On Sunday I will finish my current series "Evangelism is not a Dirty Word-Making the Gospel Good News Again." I have been dealing with Servant Evangelism. This final installment will be "A Journey Along the Yellow Brick Road." (Taken from Steve Sjogren's book -Changing The World Through Kindness and changed from spiritual warfare to servant evangelism.)

Each of the characters in the Wizard of Oz show us something that each of us go through in our journey toward learning to serve others. It is really going to be fun preaching this sermon. I even have a copy of the music of the yellow brick road to play at the beginning of the sermon.

New ways of doing things to get the people to remember and understand. Beginning to think outside of the box.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Look at the hard times again

So many times as we go through hard times we forget the big picture. I have been reminded of this today.

In April of this year my church had to move out of its rented location after 7 years. This was really hard. We began to meet in a local Catholic Church but after a few months were asked to leave because the Spirit of God was moving and people were responsing with acts of worship. You know being free in their expressions. So, we moved back into a hotel meeting room.

About 4-5 weeks ago an employee of the hotel asked us to pray for her because she had cancer. We prayed that God would heal her and today she came and found me to tell me the physicians have said the cancer is gone with no treatment.

If we as a church and I as a pastor had not gone through the hard times we would not have been at this hotel for church services. It just reminds me to think about the hard stuff in a new light.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Top 10 ways to know you are in a really bad church

10. The Church bus has gun racks
9. Staff consists of "Senior Pastor, associate Pastor, and Socio-Pastor"
8. The Bible they use is the "Dr. Seuss Version"
7. ATM in the lobby
6. Services are B.Y.O.S.-"Bring Your Own Snake"
5. Choir wearing leather robes
4. No cover charge, but communion is a 2 drink minimum
3. Karaoke worship time
2. Ushers ask "Smoking or Non-Smoking?"
1. The only song the church organist knows is "Innagaddadavita"

Friday, October 13, 2006

New Book: Never Eat Alone


Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi is a great read. Keith writes about how to build a lifelong community of colleagues, contacts, friends, and mentors. This is a must read for anyone who truly wants to make difference in people's lives.