Blogging / Preaching part 1: “I BELIEVE"

The first part of the Apostle’s Creed that we will look at are the very first two words; “I believe”. A Creed, after all, is simply a statement of belief.

So before we enter into the content of what it is we believe, let’s look at just what belief is and how it is we believe. Here are a few questions/discussion starters to get us going.

1) What does it mean to believe something?
2) Is belief the same thing as faith, or is it different? How so?
3) How does what (or who) we believe in affect how we believe?
4) How does a person come to believe in God? (How did YOU come to believe in God?)
5) Any suggestions for hymns or acts of worship?

6) Most importantly...so what? How does this have any meaning for your life, change the way you live or transform the world?

Any other questions or comments that you have – please post or e-mail or put in the question box at church.

Naturally, I'm not asking you to answer all the questions above - they are only posted to get your brains going.

Some scriptures to look at (two or maybe three of these will be used in worship)
Genesis 15:1-7, Exodus 3:7-14, 4:1-9, Numbers 14:1-11
Matthew 21: 18-23, Mark 9:17-24, Mark 16:9-16, Galatians 3:21-25,

Do you have any suggestions for other scriptures? Please let me know!

This topic will be preached on June 14th

Homiletical Blogging.

Hey! Remember that thing I said I was going to do last month?
No?
Wait…you didn’t read my blog last month?
You’ve NEVER read my blog!?!?

all kidding aside, here’s what we’re doing. Yes, WE.

I am posting some general information/reflection/discussion questions about some of our basic beliefs as Christians. Soon (I’m thinking two weeks from now) I will be preaching on the subject.

However, what is going to determine the shape of the sermon and the worship are YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.

So I either would like you to do one of the following.
1) Post a comment to this blog
2) Leave a comment in the ‘Question and Answer” box on the table in the narthex at church.
3) E-mail me your comment (my e-mail address is on the church website and printed on our Sunday bulletins)

Your comment can include any or all of the following
1) whether you agree or disagree with what I have said about the topic
2) things that you think I have missed
3) questions you have about this topic
4) hymn suggestions
5) Suggestions for prayers or liturgies or anything of the like.
6) Things you have heard from other preachers/ sermons about this
7) How this topic is relevant to your life
8) Anything else pertinent to the discussion

You need not only comment on what I have said. Read the comments of others and respond to them as well!

I pray that we will all enter into this little experiment and see wonderful things arise from it!

The Peace of Jesus be with You!
- Pastor Mike

Holy Week at Faith UMC!

Above are several pictures detailing some notable events from Holy Week (April 9th through the 11th, plus Easter Sunday).

The first is a large wooden cross that I made (all by myself!) with some cannibalized lumber from some old bookshelves from the parsonage basement. I had a lot of fun making this, it felt good to put something together with my own two hands. I used this cross in two different worship services during Holy Week.

On Good Friday, we had a small, short and sweet afternoon service. It culminated in a time of silent confession where each person there wrote a confession of some kind (and no, I did not read any of these besides my own – so I don’t know what people wrote) and proceeded to nail it to the cross. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the passion story that we forget why Jesus died. It was for me, for you and for all. It was to save us from our sins.

2nd Corinthians 5:21 - God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We nailed our sins to the cross to symbolize how Jesus took on the sin of all humanity so that in his death all sin is destroyed.

After the service I took the cross and tried to find a place to set it during our sunrise service on Easter morning. I found a large tree stump on the side of the parsonage with a hole in it. The cross fit perfectly, but as I stuck in there I evidently chased a young blacksnake out of its hiding place and it crawled up into the azalea bush next to the stump.

That really made me think.

God has dealt with sin through the cross of Christ. In the Old Testament, a sin offering was made not to appease God, but to chase sin out of the community by placing the sins of the people on a sacrificial animal that was led away from the city and away from that community. Christ was the sacrifice that chased sin out of the community that is all creation, His sacrifice on the cross chased sin out of existence. And here I was chasing a serpent out of its hole…with a big ‘ol cross.
Hmm….

Anyways on Easter Sunday, during our sunrise service we set the cross in that stump as we burned away those “sins” that we wrote down, symbolizing God’s forgiveness. We then proceeded to “flower” the cross to represent the new life that we now have in Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen savior!

Romans 6:4 (NASB) Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

A Lenten Reflection...sweet...

So I'm getting ready for Good Friday and Easter and I'm getting pretty excited!

I mean, it's my first time doing all this stuff! I pray that it all goes well.

I pray that the Holy Spirit really moves Faith UMC as we gather in worship and fellowship.

One thing that I think is a really Spirit filled activity is the Easter Egg hunt.

Yes, Holy Spirit filled.

Come on! Lil' kids running around trying to find colorful plastic eggs filled with candy?

All the while the adults are watching and laughing and enjoying one-another.

Being a community.

Dare I say, loving one-another as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ?

Any-hoo, I decided to grab some candy to put in these eggs. And as I browsed the shelves, I see why some folks are wary of the commercialization of Easter. They should be, the amount of candy on these shelves was ridiculous...and oh so tasty looking (drooooool...)

As I beheld the image that's posted above, I remembered Jesus and the disciples in the garden, and how Jesus told them "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." (Luke 22:40)

I'm diabetic, if you didn't know. So my parents had to carefully portion my Easter treats (which kinda takes the fun out of it). I'll tell you, to do the same now as a grown-up...it is an exercise in resisting temptation - - and yes, sometimes I fail to do so.

And it happened today, after I came home from the store. No, I didn't eat the candy - that's for the kiddies. It was a pastry...OK it was a Pop Tart. It wasn't even worth it! I traded my health for a cheap and tawdry Pop Tart! But it had that delicious looking strawberry icing and....

...sprinkles.

I didn't even bother to toast it.

I could hear the voice of Jesus say "Pray that you will not fall into temptation."

And I could hear my inner-voice say "quiet, Jesus! I'm too busy pigging out on a Pop Tart to listen to you!"

How should the story end? "And the Lord smoteth Pastor Mike with a diabetic coma, and it was good." or "His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your Pop Tart? Curse Kellogg's and die!" (if you know that Kellogg's makes Pop Tarts it makes that joke funnier - also read Job chapter 2)

Nope. My blood sugar before dinner was 97.

God is good. Sometimes God let's me suffer the consequences of my sin (even little ones like eating a Pop Tart). But often, I find myself reprieved. Forgiven.

I've fallen to temptation before, and to things much more poisonous and degrading than a Pop Tart. I've ignored my Lord too may times when he has said "Pray that you will not fall into temptation."

Good Friday is a day away. When I'm leading services, when I'm talking about what Jesus did on the cross. Will I remember that it's my sin he took from me and took to the cross?

Lord, help me remember my Pop Tart. In fact help me remember all the Pop Tarts. Help me remember all the cheap tawdry things I've turned to, when I could have turned to You.

Don't let me turn away from Jesus when I see him on the cross.

Give me the strength my soul needs to look at him and to listen.

God, too often I've turned away when Jesus has said

"Pray that you will not fall into temptation."

Do NOT let me turn away when he says

"Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:24)

The Forcast Is Cloudy At Faith!

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus,
Hebrews 12:1- 2a

When’s the last time you shared your faith with somebody?

• I don’t mean give a sermon
• I don’t mean whacking somebody over the head with a Bible
• I don’t mean yelling at somebody about eternal damnation and repentance
• I don’t mean exegete a passage of scripture from its original Greek in order to extrapolate great theological meaning (say what?)

What I mean is...

When’s the last time you simply mentioned something about God or Jesus or prayer, church or the Bible to a friend, family member or co-worker who you know does not have an active faith life or does not belong to a community of faith?
Heck, when’s the last time you talked with somebody at Faith (and I don’t count) about your personal faith; about your beliefs?

The Cloud of Witnesses this passage refers to is all those who have witnessed to their faith, who have shared what they believe in and trust in with others.
If we want to be an effective church, then we need to understand that we are part of this cloud. If we want to throw off the old things that hinder us from growing and thriving and instead fix our eyes on Jesus as we seek to follow God’s call to new things and new life – then we need to share our faith.
If we want to do what Jesus is calling us to do then we do need to fix our eyes on him who says things like “you’ve heard it said….but I say to you” (see the Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 5ish to 7ish). We need to fix our eyes on Jesus as he tells us “you’ve been doing things one way…but I tell you…”
How do we fix ourselves on Jesus? One thing we must do is be each-others preachers and prophets – we need to be witnesses to Jesus Christ to each other. By sharing our faith we discover how Jesus is calling us together. And by sharing our faith with the rest of the world, we invite others into this kind of life-changing community of faith where they can find new life and direction and purpose.
And this time I don’t mean sharing faith in terms of doing. Yes, we display our faith with food pantry and stuff like that. But I mean TALKING about who we believe in! Let’s together fix our eyes on Jesus and speak the truth about Him to each other and to the world!

The Apostle's Creed

Hi everybody (like...all three people who read my blog, counting my Mom...sigh, I digress)

Had a thought and I figured I'd share it.

We never read the Apostles Creed in Church anymore.

Why? There's nothing wrong with it. It's a perfectly good statement of faith!

Is has also occurred to me that too many Christians either don't know what they believe or worse - don't bother to think or meditate on this stuff.

Theology isn't the job of the eggheads in universities and seminaries. It's the job of the church.

And we are the church!

So here's my plan. Sometime soon we're going to go through a new sermon series at Faith UMC. What we're going to do is go through all of the Apostle's Creed - line by line. We're gonna refocus ourselves on our core beliefs and try to look at some hard questions that come up.

I'm also going to post reflections on each topic every week as a spiritual discipline on this blog - and as a way to incorporate your comments and questions into the sermon.

I'm thinkin' that once school lets out in early May (for me that is...), it would be a good time to start the series.

Let me know what you think!

Peace and Love in Jesus' Name,

Pastor Mike

Oh yeah, here's a link that has several versions of the creed in it as well as some interesting history

the picture above is a mosaic of the apostles ("the original boy band")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles_Creed

This picture really doesn't do justice to the gorgeous sunset I was trying to capture on film (actually, it's a digital media card). There were bright oranges blazing next to not-so-subdued purples washed in a hue of sky-blue. Words cannot describe, and neither does this picture.

I must have tried to capture those beautiful colors with my camera phone twenty times. Each time it just kinda came out like this. Much grayer.

In my sermon this week I talked about how I was such a grouch this week, about how I was in a spiritual funk. I was spiritually gray. And no matter how many times I tried this week, I couldn't get out of this dreary grayness.

Maybe this past week was a lesson for me. Maybe I needed to learn how to wait on the Lord. Perhaps the brilliant colors of joy, love and peace were around me every second of every day. Perhaps my grayness is like this picture. It's only a snapshot of my life that doesn't really do justice to the truth of what is happening.

When I look at this picture, the first thing I think of is not what I see, but what I saw with my own eyes when I took the photo. I see this rather plain picture and I immediately think of the brilliance of that sunset.

I think this is what joy is. When we look at a snapshot of our lives; when we are in difficult times; when it's been a gray day, week, month or year, we need to look beyond it. There is brilliance in our lives that is far greater than any sunset...

...because on Easter Sunday, the son rose.

Maybe all I need to do to move beyond my spiritual funk is to move closer to the cross and by doing so experience the power of Jesus' resurrection all the more.