Presby-Musings

This week we are concluding the sermon series on the vision of our church that we started three weeks ago--a sermon series entitled, Know Jesus, Show Jesus.  That is, in fact, our vision: To Know Jesus and to Show Jesus.   Every year for the past seven years I have preached at least once on the vision of our church and/or on our core values.  Our vision is to Know Jesus and to Show Jesus to the world--that's the "Why" we do what we do, why we exist, etc.  Our core values, what we call the 5 Things are the "How" we accomplish all of that.   You might wonder why we need to go over these things again and again.  We need this now more than ever, sisters and brothers.  We have a lot of new folks who are just figuring out what our church is all about, and we need to share with them why they felt so strongly that God was calling them here.   Plus, we need to practice well how to live into our vision because--as my coach used to tell us--yo...

Today we are going to continue the sermon series we launched last week.  A three-part series on the vision of our church:  To Know Jesus, and Show Jesus.   You might be wondering why we need to hear sermons on these topics again if we've gone over them in the recent past.  There's a couple of really good reasons:  First, there are a lot of new people in our congregation who haven't heard about them and why they are important.  Over a hundred, actually.  Which may not seem like a lot to some people, but in Presbyterian world that's a lot of new members.  Second, if you don't revisit the things that are important to you, dust them off and shine them up every once in a while, they very well may stop being so important. Today we are going to talk about our core values as a church.  Why is it important to have core values?  What would you think would be a good reason to know how you are going to accomplish whatever it is th...

This week we are launching a new three-part sermon series on the vision of our church.  Seven years ago, the leaders of our church came together and agreed upon a unifying biblically-based, Holy Spirit inspired vision for our church that we believed would help carry us into the future.   Our vision is the very title of this sermon series, in fact--Know Jesus, Show Jesus.   That vision has carried us forward, and I am convinced it will carry us even farther.   Every year for the past seven years I have preached at least one sermon series a year on the vision of our church.  The reason why I constantly come back to our vision is because it's far too easy to forget where you came from when you start having success.   My first ministry job was to be the youth director of the worst youth group ever.  Seriously, it was a tough gig.  I was called to be the youth director of a very small church in Tallahassee Florida.  We had probably 80 p...