From Sampler to Sower

Our church is currently holding revival services with Rev. Larry and Tamla Leckrone.  That’s right, good old fashioned revival.  I count it a privilege to serve a church that still makes a priority out of revival. And it’s an honor to be a part of a theological tradition in which revival services have long had an important place.

Of course, sometimes being a part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition carries with it some baggage which proves less than helpful.  The Holiness tradition in general and the Church of the Nazarene in particular have a long reputation of being legalistic.  For many years the American Holiness Revivalism movement has defined holiness in terms of the things we don’t do.  We took seriously the call to “Come out from among them, and be ye separate” and frequently measured that separation in terms of the things we turned away from.

• We didn’t drink.
• We didn’t smoke.
• We didn’t dance.
• We didn’t cuss.
• We didn’t wear make-up.
• And we certainly didn’t stop the list with just five prohibitions.

Then something happened…

(more…)

Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Text(s): Genesis 4, Romans 5

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 7 of 10, Difficulty is up, just because there was so much different this week.  None of it was especially hard, in particular because of the great services available from polleverywhere.com (more on that tomorrow), but this week was far from typical.

Message Summary: Many of our typical subject lines (sermon title, message in a sentence, even text) don’t really apply to this series.  As I told our students last week, we’re trying something new.  With a series called You Decide we’re giving our students the opportunity to determine which way we go in our teaching.  We’ve challenged them to ask questions.  If there’s something they always wondered about the Bible, ask.  If there’s an issue they are facing for which they’d like a Biblical perspective, then ask.  If there’s something that their friends are going through and they want to know how they can help, just ask.

(more…)