From Sampler to Sower

Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekend Teaching Series: Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Title: Myth #4: All You Gotta Do is Believe

Sermon in a Sentence: Biblical faith moves from mental assent, to trust, to obedience, and ultimately to an experience of God’s grace.

Text(s): Genesis 15:6; John 3:36, 6:29; Acts 8;Romans 5:1; 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 2:8-9

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 of 10 Yeah, we did another custom video (see below) but that’s nothing new.  The only “new” thing was having to convert a Quicktime video clip from wingclips.com so it would play in EasyWorship.  (We use Super for video conversions. I thoroughly recommend it.  I do not, however, necessarily recommend EasyWorship.  It has some real plusses, but also some significant drawbacks.)

Message Summary:

The message this week focused on what exactly the Bible means by “Faith.”

We started off talking about the “power of positive thinking.”  Showed a quick video clip from the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop from wingclips.com.  If you haven’t checked them out yet, I’d strongly recommend it.  They have a detailed and current index of movie clips.  What is more, you can get the clips directly from them, including clips from movies that are in theaters right now, like Mall Cop.  Seeing a clip from an “In Theaters” movie instantly got students attention.  Next time it might not, but for the first time we’ve used Wingclips, it was an instant attention getter.

The clip we showed featured Paul Blart (Kevin James) explaining that “the mind is the only weapon that doesn’t need a holster.”

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Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekend Teaching Series: Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Title: Myth #3: It’s to late for me to go home now

Sermon in a Sentence: You are God’s child, and there will always be a place at home for you.

Text(s): Matthew 12:31-32; Luke 15:11-24

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 of 10; Again, about the only difficult thing was producing another episode of our Mythbusters spoof videos.

Message Summary:

This week I decided to offer something even better than a summary.  If you’re interested, I’ve posted the full audio of the sermon in our Senior High Service.

Of course, if you’d rather read a summary, here it is.

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Last week was a crazy week.  Didn’t get much done by the way of blogging unfortunately.  But I didn’t forget you all . . .

Here it is, the Week in Review for our second night in the Mythbuster’s series.

Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekend Teaching Series: Mythbusters

Message Title: Myth Two: God Doesn’t Speak to People Any More

Sermon in a Sentence: If we want to hear God’s voice, we need to stop reading the Bible and start eating it.

Text(s): Deuteronomy 11:18; Joshua 1:8;1 Samuel 3; Psalm 1:2; 2 Timothy 2:15; James 1:22; Revelation 10:9

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 7 of 10, now that our set is set, this service was fairly easy.  The only real challenge was making yet another episode of Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Summary: We started with the story of the calling of Samuel, a young man dedicated to God by his mother Hannah, who grew up in the Tabernacle serving God and the High Priest Eli.  Late one night the Bible tells us that Samuel heard a voice calling his name.  He got up, went to the side of the aging Eli the priest, as he probably did fairly often, and asked “What is it you want?”  Eli tells Samuel that he did not call him, and sends him back to bed.

The Bible tells us this happens three times before the High Priest realizes what’s going on.  Finally it dawns on the old priest that God is calling the boy.

Now we can understand why young Samuel might be confused.  What doesn’t make sense is Eli’s response.  How can the High Priest of Israel fail to recognize the voice of God?

I suspect it’s because Eli fell for our second myth: God doesn’t speak to people any more.

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The coming of Epiphany also marks the beginning of second semester for our school students.  And it marks the end of Christmas break and the return of our weekly youth services.  So, here it is, our first Week in Review of 2009.

Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekly Teaching Series: Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Title: Myth #1: It’s the motions that matter

Sermon in a Sentence: It’s time to stop going through the motions of Christianity and begin seeking God as our first priority and greatest desire.

Text(s): Deuteronomy 4:29, 1 Samuel 13, 2 Chronicles 15, Matthew 5:6, 7:7-8

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 10 of 10; This was a lot of fun, but a lot of work.  Christmas Break was blessing and curse.  Gave us some extra time to get our Christmas set down and the Mythbusters set up, but vacation also ate up some of that extra time.  Also, a we launched a series of in-house Mythbusters episodes which added a lot to the complexity.

Mythbusters Set, for more info and higher res, click on picture.

Message Summary: This message in a nutshell was the tale of two kings, Saul (of Israel) and Asa (of Judah).  Saul became king of Israel during a time of war and unrest.  He was anointed by the prophet Samuel who gave him some pretty clear instructions: “Go to Gilgal and wait.  In seven days I will come and we will offer sacrifices.  But don’t do anything until I come and tell you what to do.”  Saul obeyed – gathering the armies of Israel to do battle with the Philistines.

When they arrived they were shocked and awed by the enemy facing them – 3,000 chariots, 6,000 charioteers and more soldiers than they could count.  The soldiers of Israel are scared, but Saul tells them “Just wait, Samuel’s coming.”

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