Sermon Series

"Christians do not claim moral superiority to non-Christians. In fact, we claim just the opposite...."

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:33:33 -0500

“Christians do not claim moral superiority to non-Christians. In fact, we claim just the opposite. Christianity confesses we are frail and flawed and our only hope is Jesus Christ.”

- John Carroll, Are You a Christian? on Amazon

Photo

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:58:47 -0500

Pastor Mark Driscoll on Ministry, Marriage & Mistakes. If...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:07:22 -0500

Pastor Mark Driscoll on Ministry, Marriage & Mistakes. If you are in ministry, Please watch this entire video.

"“A sect is a front for narcissism. We gather with other people in the name of Jesus, but we..."

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:57:42 -0500

“

“A sect is a front for narcissism. We gather with other people in the name of Jesus, but we predefine them according to our own tastes and predispositions. This is just a cover for our individualism: we reduce the community to conditions congenial to our imperial self.” – Eugene Peterson

“The sectarian impulse is strong in all branches of the church because it provides such a convenient appearance of community without the difficulties of loving people we don’t approve of, or letting Jesus pray us into relationship with the very men and women we’ve invested a good bit of time avoiding.” – Eugene Peterson

“A sect is accomplished by community reduction, getting rid of what does not please us, getting rid of what offends us, whether ideas or people. We construct religious clubs instead of entering resurrection communities.” – Eugene Peterson

”

"“Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:07:50 -0500

“

“Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda.”

“In the 21st Century, the anti-traditional marriage community is in league with the anti-life community, and together with the NAACP and other sympathizers, they are seeking a world where homosexual marriage and abortion will supposedly set the captives free.”

”

- Dr. Alveda C. King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/gay-ministry-time-for-christians-to-look-past-debate-on-same-sex-marriage-75458/

Dying Movie Theaters = Opportunities

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:29:56 -0500

Avram Piltch, a writer for laptopmag.com, recently released an article titled, 15 Current Technologies a Child Born Today Will Never Use. One of the items on his list that caught my eye was movie theaters. It caught my eye because, if he is right, this will present a wonderful opportunity for church planters to find facilities for worship. Facilities that, in large part, will be located in well known, high traffic areas, are already up to code, and designed to accommodate crowds and presentation. Check out his article in the link above and his reasoning on theaters below.

—-

Movie Theaters

Pundits have been predicting the death of the movie theater since the first televisions hit the market, but this time, it’s really going to happen for a number of reasons. First, with large HD televisions going mainstream and 3D sets becoming more affordable, the average home theater is almost as good as the average multiplex theater. Second, studios and their cable partners have begun releasing some movies for on-demand viewing on the same day they debut in theaters, a trend which is likely to continue.

Finally, the cost of going to a movie theater is so out of control — movie tickets in New York cost around $13 each — that nobody is going to keep paying it. In a world where an on-demand film that’s still in theaters costs $7 to rent and one that just left the theater streams for $2.99 from Amazon, who will spend more than $50 for a family of four to go see the same movie surrounded by annoying patrons, dirty seats and overpriced popcorn? Art house theaters that offer specialized films and a sense of community may remain, but the average multiplex will be gone before my son notices it was ever there.

"Preach from your weakness and you’ll always have material. Preach to the broken and..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:01:28 -0500

“Preach from your weakness and you’ll always have material. Preach to the broken and you’ll always have an audience.”

Stats on Sex from research compiled by Mark Driscoll for the...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:52:38 -0600

Stats on Sex from research compiled by Mark Driscoll for the book he authored, along with his wife Grace, Real Marriage.

yep.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:40:00 -0600

yep.

Video

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:29:02 -0600

Photo

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:56:04 -0600

Nice title slide for series on The fruit of the Spirit.

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:27:26 -0600

Nice title slide for series on The fruit of the Spirit.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:09:08 -0600

““If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea.””

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

CS Lewis on The Bacon Strip Strip Tease

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:17:00 -0600

You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act - that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?

One critic said that if he found a country in which such strip-tease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving. He means, of course, to imply that such things as the strip-tease act resulted not from sexual corruption but from sexual starvation. I agree with him that if, in some strange land, we found that similar acts with mutton chops were popular, one of the possible explanations which would occur to me would be famine. But the next step would be to test our hypothesis by finding out whether, in fact, much or little food was being consumed in that country. If the evidence showed that a good deal was being eaten, then of course we should have to abandon the hypothesis of starvation and try to think of another one. In the same way, before accepting sexual starvation as the cause of the strip-tease, we should have to look for evidence that there is in fact more sexual abstinence in our age than in those ages when things like the strip-tease were unknown. But surely there is no such evidence. Contraceptives have made sexual indulgence far less costly within marriage and far safer outside it than ever before, and public opinion is less hostile to illicit unions and even to perversion than has been since Pagan times.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Macmillan, 1973), pp. 89-90

"If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course,..."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:08:45 -0600

“If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,’ they may mean ‘the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of’. If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Neglecting the Familiar

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:11:00 -0600

I won. I’ve finally won something on e-bay.

I won a cd for $1.49.

The cd was released in 1991. It was around the time that cd players became more affordable and more artists released their music on cd’s. Digital audio was still a relatively new technology and so production companies often printed instructions for how to care for the cd on the cd case insert.

I was amazed at the instructions that were given.

Always hold the cd by the edges. When not in the cd payer always return the cd to its case. If a fingerprint should get on the underside of the disc only wipe it off with a soft, dust/lint free cloth and always wipe in a straight line away from the center of the disc.

The instructions for care were followed by the promise, “If you care for your compact disc in this manner it should provide you with a lifetime of listening pleasure.”

As I read those instructions I mentally balanced them with the way an average person actually handles a cd.

I’ve got about three just laying loose in the floor of my car right now!

When we’re not using them for a coaster we throw them around, pile them on top of each other (not in their cases) and wipe the pizza sauce off the underside with the back of our shirt (well, at least I do).

As our familiarity grows our care lessens.

This seems to be true of most things.

Consider the first year of marriage versus the 10th. If she gets a cold in the 1st year you’re rushing to the emergency room. If she gets a cold in the 10th year you’re buying a box of Kleenex so she doesn’t get anything in the casserole.

When I bought my first new car I babied it. No fast food. Wipe your feet. Routine maintenance, wash and wax. No driving fast or hitting bumps. Park at the back of the parking lot so some junker won’t scratch the paint. After about 3 months that all starts to fade. Before 1 year is up there’s fries under the floormats, pop stains in the cup holder and cd’s lodged in the seats.

When I first got my laptop I kept a lint free cloth between the keyboard and screen whenever I closed it. I always set it on a laptop fan base to keep the internal hardware cool and prevent damage.

Not anymore.

As our familiarity grows our care and attention lessens.

We become so familiar with things that we cease to genuinely care for them and appreciate their value. We take them for granted and neglect the care they properly deserve.

I sure hope this hasn’t also become true of my walk with God.

"If I had not come..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:34:14 -0600

What if Jesus had never come? What would the world look like? What kind of impact has He had on the world? Whether we choose to believe in Him as Lord & Savior or not the impact His life has had on our world is undeniable.

The good news of the gospel and the message of Christmas is that He did come and our world has never been the same. That is truly glad tidings of great joy!

Idea lifted from the first words of John 15:22 where Jesus says, “If I had not come…”

Images for idea, If he had not come (John 15:22).

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:30:19 -0600

Images for idea, If he had not come (John 15:22).

The World of the First Christmas

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:07:13 -0600

Athens was in the late afternoon of its glory. The gods of Greece and Rome no longer could command the blind allegiance of the masses. Education, philosophy and great art created desires they could not fill. In the end the verdict was clear. Athens could produce Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Rome produced Seneca, Cicero, Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Julius Caesar. But the best man could do was not enough. Nothing could fill the “God-shaped vacuum” inside the human heart. Art, literature, poetry, music, architecture, and the greatest military machine the world had ever known, all of it taken together could not provide meaning to life, or point the way to lasting forgiveness, or offer any answer to three questions we all must answer: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?

Again, it is a simple historical fact that the condition of the heathen world was deplorable. Even the Roman poets said as much. They saw the problem but were powerless to do anything about it. They knew the truth, at least part of it, but had no power to effect lasting change. The result was gross superstition, debased immorality, widespread corruption, evil run amok, and rank unbelief.

This is the world into which Christ came. It is the world Paul describes so graphically in Romans 1, a world that knew the truth but suppressed it, ignored the true God, and turned to idolatry. It was a world that was given over to paganism, sexual immorality, homosexuality, murder, perversion, dishonesty, and brutality. A world of broken promises, broken dreams, broken homes, and broken hearts. And into that darkness God shined a light in a stable in an obscure village called Bethlehem.

From blog post by Dr. Ray Pritchard

http://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/2006-12-13-The-First-Christmas-Miracle/

"Come now to the babe in Bethlehem’s manger. Little children should come for he was once a..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:55:55 -0600

“Come now to the babe in Bethlehem’s manger. Little children should come for he was once a little child himself. Young women should come for Mary was a young woman who was God’s instrument for bringing Christ into the world. Young men should come for Joseph was a young man who had great faith in God. Old women should come for Anna was an old woman who looked for the coming of the Lord. Old men should come for aged Simeon waited for the consolation of Israel. The working men and women should come to Christ because the shepherds represent all those who work with their hands for a living—and they too came to Bethlehem. Finally, the highly-educated of the world should come for the Wise Men came bearing gifts. They too bowed and worshiped the King.”

- Charles H. Spurgeon