That sounds like the kind of question a doctor might ask you, doesn’t it? “Mr. Johnson, has your koinonia been acting up lately?” Or, “Mrs. Smith, take two pills daily and it should help take care of that koinonia problem you’ve got.”
While it may sound like it, koinonia is not a disease or an aillment. On the contrary, it is something found among the healthiest of people. In fact, if you don’t have koinonia, you may be more unhealthy than you realize.
This all begs the question, then, what is koinonia? The word is…
This Sunday, there’s one more empty seat in our sanctuary than we’re used to. It is the now empty seat of Mrs. Mirle Matheny. As you likely already know, one of our dearest and godliest members, Mrs. Matheny, was unexpectedly and suddenly called to heaven on Tuesday this week.
Such news is a burdensome joy. On the one hand, it is planet’s earth’s loss but, on the other hand, it is heaven’s gain. She touched countless lives in our church and around the world. She even touched my life too. That’s why I would like to share with you some of the most important things that I learned from her. (This is an excerpt from her funeral message that I delivered yesterday.)
Everyone in my family is a bookworm. We’re not ashamed to admit it.
My wife especially loves to read. Have you heard of people who “speed-read”? Well, my wife has her own version. I call it “speed-of-light reading”. I’ll ask her, “So, how’s that new book on the Amish you’ve been reading?” And she’ll say, “Oh, that was two books ago.” I’ll say, “I thought you just started that book this morning.” And she’ll say, “Yeah, it’s been a slow reading day.”
I, on the other hand, love books more out of necessity than recreation. Thanks to my doctoral program work right now, I suspect that I will probably die soon from blunt force trauma (aka “being crushed to death under the weight of all my reading”.) Nevertheless, I honestly do love every single page of it.
As much as we both love books, it almost pales in comparison to our children. They love to “read” books and have books read to them. Like all parents, though, we want to be sure…
Call it a “bucket list” if you will. But, like most people, I have always had a few goals that I want to achieve before I die. It’s nothing extravagant, but here it is.
Tyler’s Lifelong Goals
1. Get married. (”Check.”)
2. Have children. (”Check.”)
3. Pastor a church. (”Check.”) 4. Maintain my 145lb high school weight.
5. Travel to England for a Premiere League Soccer/Football game (maybe one day)
6. Be published.
Snow is a powerful thing. A mere five second mention of it by the nightly weatherman can elicit a wide range of feelings and reactions.
On the one hand, there’s the “Snowmageddon” mentality that drives masses of wide-eyed shoppers to the grocery store to fight one another for the last containers of milk. It’s like a wintery version of the apocalyptic movie “Mad Max”. I expect one day to see a snow-crazed Mel Gibson leading a band of looters to smash down the doors of Food Lion because they just can’t live 48 hours without the all important, one dozen eggs.
On the other hand, there are those who find snow therapeutic and calming. It forces them to slow down or even stop completely. It makes them play with their kids. It affords them time to enjoy a good book by the fire. Snow has a restorative affect upon their families and personal psyche.
Not only do we enjoy good stories, but whether we realize it or not, our lives revolve around them. Conversations are dominated by stories. Nightly news broadcasts are grouped around stories. Comedians tell stories. Newspapers are filled with stories. Facebook updates and Twitter tweets are, in some way, mini-stories themselves. If there were no stories, then communication, as we know it, would not exist. (I suppose we would just walk around handing spreadsheets to each other to share information. Talk about boring.)
Even though human civilization is shaped in every way by stories, men (even Christian men) have a curious tendency to forget that the most important information ever communicated to us (e.g. the Bible) is, itself, a story. Being inspired, the Bible is a unique, God-given story. But, at its core, it is still a story nonetheless.
Just recently, in our December called church business meeting, the members of our church unanimously voted to approve next year’s Ministry Investment Plan (budget) which included an exciting new incentive: the 2013 Freedom Plan.
The Freedom Plan is an aggressive debt-retirement approach that will make us debt free in , you guessed it, 2013.
It is a simple but sure-fire plan that takes current budgeted money and temporarily reallocates it to rapidly retire our mammoth debt ($472,000) in a record amount of time.
We did not choose for our building to originally fall and cause this great debt. But we CAN choose to pay off this great debt and get back to ministering at our full potential.
Having thought about our debt for many years now, I must say that, for the first time, I am…
That’s the shocking tagline for a new video game scheduled to hit the shelves in February 2010. Patterned after the 700 year old Italian poem, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno is a horrifying video game experience that takes players into the fiery pits of the afterlife.
By assuming the role of the lead character, Dante, players of the Inferno will plunge themselves into the darkness of hell battling demons, grotesque monsters, and even Lucifer along the way. As a tribute to the original poem, players even explore the nine rings (or levels) of hell each of which is dedicated to a specific sin (e.g. lust, heresy, gluttony, anger, etc.)
By battling the forces of darkness, players are on a quest to rescue Dante’s sweetheart, Beatrice, from the eternal clutches of Satan. Rated “M” for Mature, Dante’s Inferno will surely provide interested XBOX and Playstation players with plenty of graphic gore and video violence.
As an outflow of our series in Psalm 118 and our church Thanksgiving celebration tonight, I thought I would share a word about gratitude.
I hope you’ll take the time this Thanksgiving season to consider, write, and even share what you’re most thankful for with others. As the doxology reminds us, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
As you know, last year the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (for International Missions) was tens of millions of dollars short of the goal. As a result, many IMB missionaries have been delayed in their deployment while others are having to return home early.
That’s why this year’s LMCO is more important than ever.
As a church, our LMCO goal for 2009 is $20,000. With the economic slump in the US as well as recent offerings which have been lower than usual here at Forest, it’s clearly not going to be easy to reach our goal or the national LMCO goal of $175 million.
For us to reach this goal and keep our missionaries on the field it is going to take every person doing their part and making a special sacrifice. As we were recently reminded from the story of the widow’s mite, “Jesus is not as interested in the size of the gift, as much as He is in the size of the sacrifice.”
This week I was thinking about some creative and nontraditional ways that I (and my family) could give a little extra to the LMCO this year. As you may know my birthday is right around Christmas time and this year I am doing something I’ve never done before. I am…
The Washington Post ran an article last week about a new trend in American religion.
The article reported that “the World Wide Web has become the hottest place to build a church.” These new online churches are, “fully interactive, with a dedicated Internet pastor..[and] one-on-one prayer through instant messaging ”
For those of you who are not technologically savvy, let me explain.
This is more than a church simply having a website. This is a completely new approach to “doing” church.
At an internet church, people do everything church related (e.g. worship, listen to sermons, have Bible studies, fellowship, etc.) simply by clicking a mouse and watching a computer screen. The church members may be living in Nevada, Alaska, and France but they are all members of the same online church. It’s a digital church for the digital age. As one Facebook pastor stated, “We live in a day…and a culture where people go to school, bank, date and do other things online…why not create a platform for them to go to church online?”
While that pastor may have been asking a rhetorical question, I want to give him (and you) an actual answer.
The conservation crowd has a famous slogan about saving the planet: “Think Globally. Act Locally.”
As fitting as that saying is for tree-huggers, it’s an even more appropriate motto for gospel-huggers.
God has a global agenda and we all have a local part to play. While not everyone is called to go to another country, everyone is called to go to another person.
We have the command. We (for the most part) have the desire. Often what we lack is the direction. So, this post, I want to give you a few ways that you can both be a missionary (at home) and encourage a missionary (from home).
Here’s a few ways to “think globally but act locally” about the Great Commission.
