Sunday Recap 9/26/10

Had a great day at New Hope Sunday. I was excited because I was going to get to teach our Kidmo kids about loss and God's answer to the pain and grief. Can't tell you how impressed I was to see that the Kidmo writers not only tackled the issue of death, but how they did it for these elementary aged kids. We need more Biblical teaching about real life events as early as the kids can grasp it. Good job, Kidmo guys.

The class went well, with the kids telling me about losses of pets, uncles, and in one case, their father. We learned that it was okay to be sad - Jesus was too. But we also learned that God had given us Jesus who conquered death by rising from the dead, and had given us all a place in heaven if we believed in Him. They actually drew a map to heaven and it began with Jesus.

It all begins with Jesus, doesn't it? If we could just get everyone - whatever age - to begin every day following Jesus wherever we went, the Kingdom of God would advance faster.

The worship set:

Holy Is the Lord
God You Reign (first time we have sung this - love the words)
Forever
A Shield About Me (so worshipful)
Amazing Grace

The message finished our walk through Colossians 3 with a call to work for God no matter who your earthly boss is or whatever your earthly job is. In this military community, I tried to draw a distinction between "Employed" and "Deployed." We might be employed by McDonald's or the Air Force, but we are deployed by God to be His agent there.

Had some folks back from extended vacations which was awesome. New Hope together is a force for God. On that note, our Child2Child girls' efforts on behalf of the Full Belly Project netted over two hundred dollars which will help the group help the poor to rise up and provide for their families. Great job again girls!

Here's the powerpoint, the sermon audio should be up later.

Sunday Recap Aug 22, 2010

We've been looking forward to this weekend for weeks, as we were going to have a pretty rare event - a church wide social. One of the areas we've identified as "needs improvement" at New Hope is our relationships with each other across genders and ages. When you are a church that meets only two times a week, even a smaller church, you can get in "silos" where you know the folks in your Bible Study class well, but not the good people in the next one. So we've revved up our monthly game night again for the fall, and are going to have some activity each month like our ice cream social tonight. New Hope has great people and getting them together tonight (as many as we could) was awesome. But let me go back to the morning activities.

Had a good turnout for Bible Study and some really great volunteers that stretched to cover some holes. Got everyone taken care of and I hear good things about what went on.

We headed over to worship and the praise band led us in:
Today Is the Day
How Great I Our God
Whole World In His Hands
Still
and Just As I am as the invitation hymn.



I used two video clips today that caused me to run a little longer than planned, but they really were great. One dealt with the danger of slipping into a meaningless ritualistic Christianity and the other really hammered the need to trust Christ and let His Holy Spirit change you. Felt like a bit off a chunk of Scripture and had to work to keep moving through, but I think the core of the message made it through. Had a visitor indicate that he had trusted Christ as Savior so God was working today and that's awesome.

Next week is Barefoot Sunday, where we finish our collection for Soles4Soles so you know it's going to be great. Plus we decided we are going to do our favorite 4 worship songs so you better get ready to leave your voice at New Hope if you join us next Sunday - and you ought to join us. :)