to improve communication with the people at Central Baptist Church, and to equip people to be ambassadors for Christ by what is posted here.
Well, it probably won’t snow tomorrow in Miami for the game, but Central’s Community Super Bowl Party will be accompanied by snow! We’ve got somewhere around 8 or so inches of snow in Marion, which hopefully should be cleaned up enough for people to get out to worship services and the party tomorrow. We hope that many in the community will come out to enjoy the game and a great time being with others. Here’s what we’ve got planned:
I’m looking forward to this event tomorrow night. I’ve invited many people, and I know some have been calling the church office this week for information and seeing our flyers in Panera, Starbucks, Whirpool, and OSUM, or reading the press release in the Marion Star, or hearing it on the local radio station. We’ve tried putting the word out because we want to be part of the community and serve the people in it. Oh, and everything is free!
So if you’re in the Marion area tomorrow night, starting at 6:00 (kick-off is 6:25) anytime to the end of the game, you’re invited to our first Community Super Bowl Party!
What are Monday Morning Rewinds? Click here to see my original post explaining them.
Yesterday’s sermon was the fifth sermon for our 2010 focus for the church: Live Intentionally. This sermon dealt with the scripture text of Acts 17:16-31. You can listen to this sermon here.
In yesterday’s sermon, I sought to answer this question: how can we stand firmly on God’s Word in the midst of the ungodliness around us? With that, the question stands: How can we engage our culture with truth?
I gave some definitions of these words because when you start using these words, people wonder what you’re really talking about. Engage means to occupy the efforts or attention; Culture is a very broad word that means the ways and makeup of a community- its people, customs, beliefs, possessions, activities, etc. Truth can be easily defined as Jesus did in John 14:6 by saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Truth is found in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.
So, in other words, this message was about how to occupy the attention of people in our community with Jesus Christ.
We started by looking at 2 Corinthians 5:20, a supporting text to our Live Intentionally focus: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (more…)
Our church’s initiative to get people studying Scripture is starting up a new plan on Monday. The current plan ends this Sunday. The new plan is a 30 day journey through the book of Acts.
Go to the Central Bible Reading Plan website to access the plan and learn more about the initiative. GET INTO SCRIPTURE!
There won’t be a Monday Morning Rewind today because I didn’t preach yesterday. Instead, Central was blessed by the preaching of Dr. Jack Kwok from the SCBO. Our worship time also welcomed Dwayne Lee from the SCBO leading music for us in a different way than we were used to. It was a great blessing to have these two men with us.
Dr. Kwok’s sermon can be found on our sermon page. It was an excellent message on the reality of heaven from 2 Corinthians 5.
The blessing of this worship time was the experience of truly being in the Lord’s presence and feeling his Spirit among us. We saw a young lady come to rededicate her life Jesus and submit to Him as He puts the pieces of her life back together! We saw hearts drawn together in prayer as a response to the Scripture that was preached.
This is the time for our church to live intentionally. My prayer is that the message and excitement from today goes outside of our building!
I wrote last week about Central’s Winter Teaching Series starting up. You can read about it here. But I wanted to note briefly here how much I am enjoying each session!
Each session is designed where I teach some on the night’s topic, stopping throughout the session for people to ask questions and make comments. I basically serve as a guide through our time together.
The most vital part of the sessions lies in this truth: the Holy Spirit reveals Himself to all believers and each one has valuable insights and questions to bring up for the benefit of the entire group.
This past week’s study was on the topic of forgiveness. It’s a hard topic in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:14-15. But what I loved about our time together was the participation of so many people who brought up things I hadn’t thought of (and probably others had not thought of) and asked questions that more than just they would benefit from. It’s such a blessing to learn from each other.
One of the misconceptions about pastors is that we know it all when it comes to the Bible and God and theology. That’s simply not true, and it’s the reason I sometimes don’t like playing the game Bible Trivia (everybody expects you to get every question right)! But with people from all kinds of backgrounds gather together with the common bond of the Holy Spirit working in their lives, it’s exciting to see how He could be revealing Scripture to them.
Each believer has something valuable to add to the discussion, and I hope those who come on Tuesday nights know that and participate.
It will be a blessing to have Dr. Kwok (executive director, SCBO) preaching and Rev. Dwayne Lee (Bible teaching/leadership team, SCBO) leading our worship musically this Sunday at Central!
Our 11:00 worship service will allow our people to catch a glimpse of how our state convention is working and how we play a part in that by cooperating with the SCBO. Dr. Kwok will briefly talk about this before he preaches. Dwayne will be using a new resource to lead us in worshiping with music, which should make this Sunday a time to enjoy worshiping God, realizing that there are so many ways to worship God!
These two men are servants for the Lord and His churches, and I appreciate their leadership in our state. If you’re in Marion this Sunday, don’t miss the opportunity to worship at 11:00 at Central.
This past Saturday, Duane Floro, from the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, came to Central to lead witnessing training with those who attended. We had decent attendance and a great time learning from Duane!
We often think about sharing our faith as memorizing a step-by-step presentation and then reciting it to someone who gives us time to recite it. That’s not what this training was about at all.
I would summarize this training as being a time to show us from Scripture the need to share our faith in Jesus and the difficulty in doing so (the parable of the sower). And it was also a time to learn how to recognize people’s receptivity to the gospel. This is paramount in witnessing. Not every person is alike, yet sometimes we think there is only one way to share the gospel. Duane’s way of teaching this topic was engaging and very practical.
We have the message of true life in the gospel of Jesus Christ! If it is really about life, then we should be concerned with the lives that we are witnessing to. That’s the idea behind a person’s receptivity to the gospel.
The training was great and I hope the people who were there are able to apply the practical truths learned.
Here are some quotes from Duane I noted throughout the session that I wanted to share:
“Acts 17:6-7. Why is no on accusing us of turning the world upside down?”
“Nothing is worse than a testimony that comes out of a life not living it.”
Failure is to recognize something and not do anything about it.”
What are Monday Morning Rewinds? Click here to see my original post explaining them.
Yesterday’s sermon was the third sermon for our 2010 focus for the church: Live Intentionally. This sermon dealt with the scripture text of Acts 2:1-13. You can listen to this sermon here.
In yesterday’s sermon, I sought to answer this question: what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
Christians have the Holy Spirit in our lives! Yet many Christians live feeling defeated, without joy, or with anxiety. This doesn’t make sense since these traits are contrary to the nature of the Holy Spirit. So when we read in Scripture that people were filled with the Holy Spirit, what does it really mean?
I started answering this question by explaining the difference between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Spirit. On the screens, I showed a list of all the references in Scripture to each of these (you can download the PowerPoint presentation as a PDF file at our sermons page to see all of the information that was posted).
Paul refers to the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, where it seems he views the baptism of the Holy Spirit as happening at regeneration, or at the admission of one into the body of Christ. Luke is the only other writer who refers to it (outside of the gospel records of John the Baptist’s words), and we see it in Acts 1:4-5 where he shows Jesus’ quoting of John the Baptist. After Acts 1:4-5, Luke only refers to the baptism of the Holy Spirit once more, in Acts 11:15-17, where Peter is talking about the initial outpouring of the Spirit on the Gentiles, and likens it to the experience he had (which I believe points back to Pentecost). Instead of referring to the baptism of the Spirit much more in his writing in Acts, Luke changes his language to say the filling of the Holy Spirit. (more…)
Yesterday I wrote asking you to pray for the people in Haiti, especially for Kathleen, the wife of Jeremy Willet, on of the guest speakers who will be at Central next month on the carried. book tour. Kathleen is an orphanage mother in Port au Prince, Haiti and had not been heard of since the earthquake hit.
Praise God that Kathleen has communicated that she is safe as well as the others in the orphanage and that their building is no longer livable but they are sleeping in tents for the time being!! To God be the glory!
I hope your heart breaks over this disaster and the people it affects, and that you will be in prayer still for recovery and healing there.
Many might be wondering how you could help. Our church’s website just posted how all of us can take part in helping Haiti. Click here to view that post and help Haiti.
Picture from Fox News' article of the destruction in Haiti.
Yesterday, Haiti suffered from a devastating earthquake, said to be the strongest one the country has seen in 200 years. You can read the Fox News article here.
I was driving home last night and the radio station had a girl call in asking for prayer for her sister and brother who are missionaries in Port Au Prince, the city in Haiti where the earthquake occurred. They have not been heard from since the quake. It was a powerful moment of agreeing with the prayer that was spoken by the radio host.
Returning home, I received a text message from my friend Justin, who is coming to Marion in a month on a book tour for his new book that was written with Jeremy Willet. Jeremy is in the band Willet, and they are currently touring in New Zealand. The band is serious about mission work and helping the poor, and even commissioned Jeremy’s wife as a missionary to be an orphanage mother.
In Port Au Prince, Haiti.
The text message from Justin said they have not heard from her. They are not sure what is happening, and from reading the article, it sounds like communication lines have been disrupted in Haiti to where there is not full communication. Jeremy is in New Zealand, his wife in Haiti, and I’m asking you to pray for Jeremy’s wife and other missionaries who have surrendered their time and perhaps even lives to serving the people in this devastated country.
Pray that God will be glorified through all of this and that there might be new opportunities to share the love of Jesus because of this disaster.
