Worship
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What Does the Lord Require of You?
I’ve been doing something this month that I’ve never done before. For the first time in my life, I’ve been wearing jeans to Sunday morning worship – and even been preaching in them. I’ve made this change for two reasons. The first is because I have been blessed to preach before an audience including a handful of new Christians recently. All of them fall into one or both of the following two categories: they either have no spiritual background at all prior to meeting members of the church, and/or they are not what the world would call wealthy (though I assure you, they are spiritually wealthy, and a conversation with…
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Two Recent Conversations (and a Lot of Thought)
I’ve had a couple of conversations fairly recently that, in some ways, seem to be totally unrelated. The more that I’ve thought about them, though, I’m thinking that there might be more of a connection than is readily apparent. On a recent Sunday morning, Donna was doing what she normally does before our period of worship begins. She was “making the rounds” to try to greet those who were visiting, having short conversations with some of our members, etc. I had finished “my rounds” (or at least had stopped when I realized that it was about time for the announcements before our worship to be made). As I was waiting…
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My Church
I understand what people mean when they use the phrase “my church.” I guess that you could say that the phrase is used in somewhat of an accommodative sense. They are basically talking about the people with whom they worship on a regular basis. At the same time, all of us might want to consider the fact that “my church” is found only one time in The New Testament. As devoted to spreading the gospel as Paul was, he never used that expression. As close to Jesus as John was, neither did he. The same thing could be said about all of the men who were inspired to write the…
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Restoration is Ongoing
[NOTE: Today’s post is the full script of a sermon I preached at Central recently. Since it is written more in “essay” form, I thought it might encourage our readers. –Adam] Tonight’s lesson is a little different in style. Even my notes look different. Typically, when I write a sermon, there is an introduction, body–with 3 or 4 points–and a conclusion. This lesson, though, is written more in essay style and, I hope, you will see why. I want to say that the idea for this lesson is not original to me, but the content is. The idea comes from a small portion of a lesson that Kirk Brothers gave…
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Hands and Hearts
While Donna and I were away from home not long ago we worshiped with another congregation composed of people of “like precious faith” (2 Peter 1:1). In accordance with the teaching of the New Testament, a part of our worship included the Lord’s Supper. The man who led us in prayer that particular Sunday used an expression I don’t ever remember hearing before. As he prayed, first before passing the trays that contained the bread and then later the ones that contained the fruit of the vine, he included the thought that went something like this: As we pass these trays from hand to hand, let us also pass them…
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The Battle You’ll Never Win as a Faithful Church
I sometimes hear people talk about how to draw people. In fact, since Central has become laser focused on evangelism over the last couple of years, I am fairly tuned into hearing about that. Spoiler alert: what truly draws people is the Gospel. That said, I hear people regularly talk about how people need to come to worship where they are because the worship is exciting. “You’ll leave feeling great.” “Our singing is outstanding.” “The sound is fantastic.” There is nothing wrong with wanting our worship to be the best it can be. But the reason for that is vital. We should want worship to be the best we can…
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Property Poor Church Members
I recently came across an article in a religious periodical published in 1918. The title of that article was the same as the title for this post. The article mentions a man who served as an elder in a local congregation who owned a great deal of property. According to a statement he made, the value of his property was $160,000. His weekly contribution to the local congregation of which he was a member was seventy-five cents! When this man was encouraged to increase his contribution, he said that he could not do that because he was “property poor.” He even claimed that his financial “stress” made it necessary for…
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A Spiritual Lesson from a Dying Phone Battery
For some time now, I’ve been dealing with a phone on its last legs. (Update: after brainstorming this article, I was able to get a new phone. Whew.) If you’ve ever had to deal with that, you know that it can be frustrating. The phone would seem to be fine. The battery clipping along near 100%…until it wasn’t. In rapid succession, I’d get a notification that it was at something like 14%, then (one second later) 7%, then…dead. The other issue was that, if it got to zero, it took hours to charge back up. Once it was, I had to keep it basically plugged in non-stop so the battery…
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A Tradition Unlike Any Other
I have a lot of friends who enjoy the game of golf. I am happy for them, but I am not a big fan. I discovered a long time ago that I could get frustrated without spending time and money trying to do something that could not even remotely be described as playing golf. I do know enough about the sport, though, to recognize that there is a tournament that takes place at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia each spring during the first full week of April. The Masters Tournament has a long history and is considered to be one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world.…
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The Board & The Cross
I remember reading a unique book years ago. Each chapter was written by a person who had left the church that the Lord said that He would build (Matt. 16:18) and was now a member of a church begun by some man, group, and/or “movement.” Because of the passing of time (and my not-so-accurate memory), I have forgotten a lot of what I read. I do remember thinking at the time that most of the contributors to the book had “an axe to grind,” some sort of agenda, or some other reason for writing that I didn’t believe to be valid. Before I get some pushback on that, I fully…
