Sunday Recap May 16, 2010

Well, after a few days away, I was able to focus on the last of the Primal series. We are really ramping up our worship at New Hope and after the worship last week in the fellowship hall, couldn't wait to get back in our super-cooled sanctuary. :)

The worship set: Here I Am To Worship, Better Is One Day, Nothing But the Blood, Grace Flows Down



When is our faith revealed to be strong? When it's bright and sunny and everything is going well? Or at Midnight? Paul and Silas revealed just what loving God with all your strength can do. In Acts 16, after a terrible day, they found the strength in Christ to have a hymn sing at midnight. We can do the same if we give God our all.

Really enjoyed studying through these messages.

Sunday Recap 03142010

- Daylight savings time hurts every year on Sunday morning, but it's worth it to get the awesome extra time in the evenings after we get home.
- Really warm vibe before Bible Study that carried over into worship. We had lots of people at New Hope today that wanted to be there and had looked forward to it all week.
- Demoed the Kidmo children's curriculum we are going to after Easter and if the response from the adults is any indication, it's going to be off the hook. I had several people come up excited about it and had some GREAT ideas about how to debut it.
- Got word we're going to be able to do a block party in Kelly Hills during spring break. COOL!
- Praise team did awesome today. You guys are awesome servants and are so faithful. Thank you.

- BUCKETS OF HOPE
- BUCKETS OF HOPE
- BUCKETS OF HOPE

Not sure exactly how many we'll end up with but it might be 20! That's New Hope helping a group of people the size of New Hope!


We so exceeded my expectations in this ministry. People were really giving sacrificially to help the Haitian people in their hour of need after already helping through the Red Cross and other agencies. The SBC alone has put almost 100 tons of food on the ground there and we're a part of that too.

- I have the feeling that despite some awesome things last year, that today marks the starting line for the run to the prize in 2010. We are going to touch more people - in more ways - in more places - with more of the love and grace of Jesus than ever before. Write it down.

Okay, today's worship set:

Here Is Our King - Crowder
Holy Is the Lord - Baloche
Unfailing Love - Tomlin
I Surrender All

Today's message continued our look at Gideon with the focus on his unusual method of "setting a fleece." His idea was to get absolute confirmation of God's will through making God jump through hoops. I expanded it some to get at some of the other "so called spiritual" ways Christians make decisions. This could have been one of those messages that changes lives in ways that I won't ever realize. If someone truly acts on what they heard and changes the way they make decisions - HUGE!



I'll try to get the audio uploaded to the website tomorrow.

Sunday recap 2/07/2010

What a great joy to hear of the upcoming marriage of two of our folks this morning. Lois Somerville and Mack Kirkland are going to tie the knot in July at New Hope. The congregation broke out into spontaneous applause. We distributed the flyers for the SBC "Buckets of Hope" help for Haiti too. Great idea and I know New Hope will step up to the challenge. We've got the annual New Hope chili cook-off coming up this Wednesday night too.  Should be a great week.

Today's music was marked by the debut of a new song "He Reigns".
Indescribable, Nothing But the Blood, He Reigns, and Grace Flows Down were our music today.

Today's message was based on Philippians 2:5-11 - this passage has been the source of many books. The theology is deep, but it's rare that we look at it from the point of view of the average Philippians at the time. Last week I spent a lot of time reading about the Roman caste system and their ideas about class, status, and honor. Phillipi was one of the cities in Asia that carried the same status as a city in Italy. As far as they were concerned they were Romans. I tried to give enough background for how they got that way.

So the lines between classes were rigid and inflexible. Everyone's goal was to move up the social ladder. It could happen if you completed military service, did something outstanding for the state, or just bought your way up the ladder of success. But it didn't happen often.

Into this walks the apostle Paul and his trusty sidekick Silas. From the beginning of his ministry there, he began to demolish the caste system and replace it with the love of brothers and sisters in Christ. Arrested and beaten for ending the slavery of one prophetess, he refuses to use his status as a Roman citizen, suffering as any common man or slave would have done. And yet when he writes to the church at Philippi he begins it with "slaves of Jesus Christ." Paul co-opted the same language that was used of Caesar and of Roman citizenship to outline a new way to relate to our fellow men and women.

Paul (under the inspiration and authority of the Holy Spirit, don't forget) then systematically demolishes their system by giving the vivid example of just what Jesus Christ did when he left heaven and "was found in fashion as a man." (Sometimes the KJV is just beautiful language.) The example of Christ's humility is a mandate for a different way to live, a different set of values, a different worldview. So how are we doing with that after 2000 years?

Not well.

We still have problems separating ourselves from the same sort of status symbols the Romans fell prey to. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit helped someone be delivered from that trap today.

Sunday Recap Nov 1 2009

After a great time with the Halloween outreach movie bash, we gathered to celebrate God's goodness and learn more about how to follow Jesus.

Our music reflected the message to come:

Come, Now Is the Time To Worship
God of This City
It Is Well With My Soul
Jesus Paid It All

In hindsight, it was noted that there was a mix of older and newer songs. Frankly, that was not a consideration when they were chosen - it just worked out that way. We have a list of all the songs we do, and what the song says - not what style it is in - is why we choose them. In my opinion the moment you have to satisfy a need to "blend" songs based on when they were written you can find yourself having to say no to what God would have you do in favor of satisfying people's preferences. It's great when it happens because you do have several generation's "heart music", but if we set our goal toward moving toward God in worship, that sort of thing will happen supernaturally.

Continuing in the "Chase the Goose" series based on Batterson's "Wild Goose Chase", we tackled the "Cage of Guilt." The basic idea was that we have been conditioned over a lifetime to have our past keep us from experiencing the best that God has for us in the future. We have to learn to put our past in its place and follow the life-giving Spirit forward.




The first part of the message was establishing the truth of behavioral conditioning. Then we dove into the Scripture to see just how God calls us forward.

Sunday Recap Oct 18, 2009

It was a long, hard week. Lots of personal heartache and lots of ministry needs. So I headed into the weekend with a heavy heart but hopeful that focusing on what God has called me to do with the people He's called me to do life with would help. It did.

Earlier in the week, I picked up my copy of Mark Batterson's "Wild Goose Chase". A few weeks ago when I was preplanning with an eye to Oct and Nov, I had taken it home to read again. Turned out to be just the basis for today's message and most likely the next couple. Batterson's basic premise is that we are living a Christianity that's far different than what God intended. Led by the Holy Spirit, we should not find ourselves being bored or trapped. Today's message dealt with "The Cage of Responsibility."



Our music was:

O Praise Him - Crowder
O Worship the King - Tomlin
Whole World In His Hands - Redman
Come Home Running - Tomlin

I used two video clips, one at the beginning of worship called "Lean In", and then a promo for The World Race 2/3 of the way through.

My hope was that some of us would break free of our chains and be more able to respond to the Holy Spirit's call.

Sunday Wrap-Up

Some Sundays I cannot wait to get home and tell everyone what happened. Others, not so much. Add to that the anxieties caused by Larry Smith's hospitalization after lunch yesterday, and I'm just now approaching the review.

FYI - There are changes ahead for New Hope. No doubt in my heart that we have some areas of "needs improvement", and some areas where present practices need to end if we are to become more effective. We've had an awesome year so far praise God, but that's exactly why we need to look at what we do with a critical eye and see what else we can do to be more engaging, more effective, more in love with Jesus. So I'll be looking through our normal practices this week and seeking feedback from you all on how we can achieve Christ's vision of what New Hope can be.

One area that I am very interested in improving is our communication both outside our worship gatherings and especially in them. We definitely try to over communicate what is happening with an eye toward education of what we are about, but it can get out of sync with the purpose of worship. When we print a worship guide, run ppt slides before the service, then make personal announcements too, it can consume a good deal of resources. The worship guide contains our communication card, so it is multipurpose, but I wonder if something we did in house might be better. Ideas?

Back to Sunday - music was...

O Worship the King (the chorus always gets me)
Better Is One Day (GREAT job praise team!)
God of This City (awesome)
Come Home Running (I LOVE this)

We're going to work harder as a praise team, and get the media folks more integrated into what we do. Sound levels are hard in our building, but we can do better.

The message-

Well, we are almost at the end of the series looking at the churches of Revelation, and everyone's favorite whipping boy - Laodecia is next. But before we move on, a look back at what we saw in the church at Philadelphia. Maybe a better summation that yesterday.

- Weakness is opportunity - when we realize that it has to be God working through us and not our (strength, wisdom, skill, whatever)then we can fully work with Him
- Opportunity is Mission - God has opened doors and regardless of what we see with our vision, they are there for us to walk through
- Mission leads to "well done!" - the reward of being a faithful steward of what God has given is His continued protection and His blessings both now and later

Sunday Recap 090609

Actually had a lot of fun with the graphics but they carried a deep truth about Christians who should be full of life and yet are living dead.

Ok, overall look at Sunday - lots of visitors and lots of home folks out of town or just out. Still, good crowd. After last weekend's highlight of the beach baptism and cookout I had selected songs that really focused on praising God, even though they didn't really mesh with the message. I just had to celebrate and thought that the rest of New Hope would want to as well.

"How can I Keep From Singing?" - Tomlin
"O Praise Him" - Crowder
"Hosanna" - Baloche

"Come Just As You Are"

My hope for the message was to set it in context then and bridge to today. Sardis was rich and totally free of the trials that the other churches were experiencing because they had religion but not a living relationship. It happens. I spent some time on what the "requirements of my God" meant for today, and how that would play out in the life of a believer today.

Sunday Night Mind Dump

Sitting here reflecting over the day - the week really.

- Realized again what a blessing it is to be able to interact with Bunny's piano students. As a direct result of those openings we welcomed Sam Hickman into the Kingdom this week and the Hickman family as part of our New Hope family.
- Was stunned when I put the pieces together this morning as it was unfolding and caught a glimpse of what God was doing in and through worship. Originally I was to preach today's message last week, but with baptism stepped away. This morning so many who were in attendance needed to hear it. Who wouldn't have heard it last week. You go God!
- Almost overwhelmed with emotion while singing "Forever"

Sing praise, sing praise
Sing praise, sing praise
Forever you are faithful
Forever you are strong
Forever you are with us
Forever

- again, people I love deeply are going through such tough times right now. To suddenly be flooded with the understanding of what God's love MEANS in the middle of singing a song...?
- I think they call that "worship"
- had three sermons going on this week - same passage - different angles - finally decided that the "Counter-cultural" was the "hook" it needed to get an audience
- "Something is wrong when our lives make too much sense to unbelievers." Francis Chan
- Whoever tried to take emotion out of walking the walk with Jesus was nuts. Passion drives action. Apathy is death.
- Looks like youth are going to W.Va. again on mission.
- I think Bunny and I will wind up going somewhere else if we're able to go. Maybe with another church,or a para-church organization.
- "Experiencing God" small groups start tomorrow night. I'm investing a lot into this and praying God will create a real revival through it.
- must be out of brain cells /end