Presby-Musings

This week our daily devotions will be reflecting on the vision of my church, which is "To Know Jesus & Show Jesus"--a vision that was outlined in last week's sermon entitled, "Knowing & Showing: What It Means To Be Us"  Every day this week we'll be focusing on our five core values (Worship, Pray, Grow, Love and Serve)--values that enable us to pursue our vision.  If you would like to read the transcript of the sermon, click  HERE .  Today we're going to take the time talk about the third of my church's five core values: Grow.   When I was a kid I had this Bible, called "The Picture Bible." It had all of the major stories from the Old and New Testaments in comic book form.  I probably read that sucker fourteen times or more--cover to cover.  But if you had asked me to devote the same time and energy to read the actual  Bible--now that would have been a different story.  I actually fell asleep reading the non-comic book ...

Today we are going to be concluding the sermon series that we've been working on for the month of May, a series entitled "I Like Giving."  This series was inspired by the book I Like Giving  which I read a while ago and which I thought would be an excellent conversation partner for a sermon series on what it means to live generously.  For more information about the book and the website that served as the inspiration for this series, you can visit www.ilikegiving.com. The central idea behind this series is simply this: We were created in the image of God--a God who is inherently generous.  It is out of God's inherent generosity that all the attributes of God flow out toward you and I.  God's mercy, love, creativity, redemption all come out of the boundless generosity of God. And, as I said, you and I are created in God's image with God's DNA embedded within us.  So it stands to reason that you and I should inherently be generous, too.   So why...

This week we are continuing the sermon series that we started last Sunday--a Sunday that happened to be the  Sunday of Sundays in the Christian calendar .  We celebrated Easter with style last week.  For the second year in a row we had over 800 people experience worship at First Church.   At our casual service, the Crossing we had 100 more people in the room than we did last year.  Everyone dressed up, wore hats and looked awesome.  Families came en masse, some of them even brought their wayward Uncle Larry, who never goes to church.  And now it's the Sunday after the Sunday.  Most of the snowbirds are gone.  Uncle Larry isn't here.  It's just us.   Easter is over.  Jesus is risen.  Now what?   This feeling that we have today is not unlike what the disciples of Jesus felt after his resurrection.  There was joy at first, then elation, then unbelievable purpose and then he left.  Jesus appeared ...

This week we are concluding the sermon series that we've been working on for the past several weeks--a sermon series entitled, "Small Things Big Difference." At the core of this series is a very simple, yet very profound idea:   It's often the small things that no none sees that result in the big things everyone wants. What do you think it will take to have the life that you've always wanted--to have a full, abundant life ?  Do you see people who have it all together and wonder how they do it?  Maybe you have a friend who has an incredible marriage, and yours doesn't measure up.  Perhaps you know someone who has the faith that can move mountains--and you sometimes wonder if God is even aware of you at all.  Or maybe you have a co-worker who just seems to find unbelievable joy in his work, and you don't. Sometimes in the face of these kinds of comparisons it is easy to get discouraged and to believe that it will take far more than you have to offer ...

This week we're continuing the sermon series that we started a few weeks ago entitled, "Small Things Big Difference."  And the central idea that we've been lifting up each week is simply this:   It's often the small things that no one sees that result in the big things everyone wants. We all want abundant life .  We want to find joy in our work.  We want solid, life-giving marriages and relationships.  We want financial freedom.  We want a strong faith that will withstand the difficult trials of life...  And sometimes it seems that it will take more than we are able to give in order to change what we need to change so that we can live the life we want to live. The past few weeks we have learned that it doesn't take much to begin life-changing transformation--just a few small steps in the right direction.  In fact, I gave you all homework to begin those small steps.  I asked that you begin by shaping your thoughts with your one word...

If you are a church leader, pastor, or otherwise church-y kind of person---this will sting a little, but it needs to be said:  You are probably the reason someone, somewhere doesn't want to ever go to church again.  I know.  Feel the sting. It's like Bactine on a knee-scrape. Admitting you have a problem is the first step. The second step is asking the obvious question: "In what ways have I caused others to hate church?"  Or to put it in corporate terms, "What is my church doing to make people hate coming to church?" A lot, as it turns out. There are hundreds of things that church-y people do to make people who aren't that church-y feel like an outsider because... they aren't that church-y.  It could be the way a church welcomes--or doesn't, insider-friendly worship, closed groups, you name it. But I have come to believe that the biggest culprit when it comes to antipathy toward church is when a congregation, faith community or ...

Over the course of the last two weeks, we've explored the first two of what we call "The Five Things ," the core values of our church.  The Five Things are: Worship, Pray, Grow, Love and Serve. We've been working on a very basic premise throughout this entire series:  "We are made of what we value."  This isn't just a metaphor, as it turns out.  As we've learned, the tens of trillions of atoms that make us us are being exchanged with other things and other people at the rate of billions per second.  And this exchange of energy affects us in very real ways. Which explains why being surrounded by negativity, darkness, depravity, sadness and the like has a negative affect on our mood, our outlook and even our physical well-being. And it also explains why surrounding ourselves with beauty, truth, hope, peace and love has the exact opposite affect.  The Apostle Paul , who wrote half of the New Testament in the Bible once wrote about this very th...