From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: Avatar

Message Title: Avatars and Incarnation

Sermon in a Sentence: We do not need to fear rejection when we approach God, because He chose us.

Text(s): Ephesians 1:3-14

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, Again, a fairly straightforward message that was fun to preach.

Message Summary:

We began by watching the following clip.  (The embedded copy is from YouTube.  We got our clip from WingClips.com.)

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A busy schedule has kept me from updating my blog recently, but I’m working to get back into the swing of posting regularly.  I’m going to go back a couple of weeks with my reviews to include all three sermons from our Avatar series.

Weekend Teaching Series: Avatar

Message Title: Avatars and Incarnation

Sermon in a Sentence: Avatar provides hints and glimpses of the greatest story ever told, but Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God in whom we can trust.

Text(s): John 1:1-14

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, A pretty straightforward night with an enjoyable theme.

Message Summary:

In January we launched a three week mini-series inspired by themes from the new blockbuster movie Avatar.  In week one of our series we examined the story of the movie as a whole and asked the question “What makes this movie so compelling?”

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Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Foolish Vow

Sermon in a Sentence: God is not honored when we treat him like the idols that surround us.

Text(s): Judges 10-11

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, A straightforward night, with one of the tougher stories in the Bible.

Message Summary:

Heroes moved into its sixth week with the story of Jephthah. We’re working our way through the book of Judges with our students, and we’re into the homestretch now.  That’s a good thing, because if you know anything about Judges, you know things are getting bad, fast.

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At the risk of sounding like a complete Tim Sanders fanboy, I want to send you to his blog Sanders Says again.

Earlier this month I linked to an outline of a talk he gave about what it takes to lead your business out of the recession and suggested there might be some important implications for those of us in ministry.  This week, he’s is at it again, expanding on his thoughts about what it takes to find yourself on the leading edge of the recovery.

You really need to head over to Sanders Says to read the whole post for yourself.

But I’d like to reflect on some of his points from the perspective of ministry here.  (more…)

Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Judge Who Wasn’t

Sermon in a Sentence: Be careful which voices you allow to have influence in your life.

Text(s): Judges 8-9

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10, There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in tonight’s service.  The only difficulty was the normal and enjoyable task of exegeting a passage of scripture and learning to hear and speak its message to a new generation.

Message Summary:

Our Heroes series based on the book of Judges for Junior High continued this week.  However, for the first time in our  series we talked about someone whom the Bible never calls a judge.  Abimelech, son of Gideon, is sometimes listed among the judges of Israel, but he neither saved Israel from any threat, nor was he called by God to this task.  His tale is just the end of the story of the judge Gideon.

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(Here’s another old sermon, this one delivered in our youth services during our first full sermon series here in Middletown in February of 2003.)

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I saw a post the other day on the Swerve blog from Lifechurch’s innovation leader (and fellow former Decaturian) Bobby Gruenewald about a time when the Presbyterian Church took official action against the dangers of riding your bicycle on Sunday.  Bobby sees in this bit of arcane Americana a reflection of how the church often responds to innovation.  He writes:

It speaks volumes about how the Church reacts to innovation at times. Instead of embracing it and looking for ways to leverage it, we feel threatened.

Obviously, this kind of reaction reminds us of cell phones in church.  But that is beginning to change.

After years of slides, videos and announcements asking people to turn off their cell phones and pagers, we’re seeing more and more stories these days about churches that are telling people to turn on their cell phones.  From encouraging people to tweet about their worship experience to using SMS polls to solicit instant responses from the congregation, to the creation of YouVersion Live, a fascinating mashup of Scripture and Social Media, the signs of a turning in the tide are everywhere.

It’s no secret our youth ministry has been asking the question “How can we leverage SMS and MMS technology for the kingdom?“  Last Lent we started asking the question “How can we make sure the next time one of our students pulls out their cell phone to tell a friend ‘Hey check this out’ that the content they are sharing comes from Water’s Edge?”  We’re still asking that question.  Our You Decide series is also trying to leverage SMS technology to engage students in community and conversation.  But we’ve still got a long way to go.

Here are some ideas we and others have used to try to leverage the ubiquitous cell phone technology rather than try to fight it.  Some of them are just for fun, to get people talking. “You wouldn’t believe what we did at Water’s Edge this week.”  Others are more directly related to our attempts to minister to our teens or reach out to others.

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Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Cowardly Warrior

Sermon in a Sentence: Actually, I didn’t have one going in . . . but more on that later.

Text(s): Judges 6-7

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 12 out of 10,This was one of my toughest nights in youth ministry ever.  The game took a little extra prep, getting audio clips ready for “Name that Tune.”  That  alone would have made it a 7 out of 10.  But what knocked this one out of the park difficulty-wise was an incredible headache, intensified exponentially by our stage lights.  After struggling through the game and music, I had to go to house lights for the teaching time and even then the headache was so bad I couldn’t think straight.  We made it through the night, but I know my teaching was adversely affected.

Message Summary:

We’re in week four of our Heroes series for Junior High. We’re working our way through the Old Testament book of Judges, seeing what we can learn from the people God chose to change their world.  As always we started with a “where we left off” review.  I was impressed at how well my students remembered the heroes from the first three weeks of the series; they even remembered Othaniel, a guy who played only a minor part in week one of the series.

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Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Tent-Peg Killer

Sermon in a Sentence: Don’t let fear keep you from being the Hero God is looking for.

Text(s): Judges 4

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 7 out of 10, I guess the easy weeks had to come to an end.  This was a Murphy’s Law kind of Tuesday night.  Fortunately, with the exception of a slightly late start due to a guitar malfunction, I don’t think any of the chaos effected the service itself.

Message Summary:

We’re in week three of our Heroes series for Junior High. You’ll remember from last week this series is taking a look at the book of Judges. We started with a quick “Where we left off…” review which reminded students of the judges cycle (Rebellion, Retribution, Repentance, Redeemer, Rescue) and of the two judges of whom we spoke so far: Othaniel and Ehud.

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OK, so maybe he’s not talking specifically about youth ministry, but I think there might be some applications we can draw.

Yesterday, Tim Sanders, author, speaker and former Chief Solutions Officer for Yahoo!, published a post on his blog entitled The Recovery is On!  In it he summarizes a speech he delivered recently to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s CEO Forum.  During that speech he gave advice to business leaders about how to lead their companies out of the recession, based on research on what made the difference between successful and average companies coming out of previous recessions.

Granted, it’s not your typical youth ministry blog fare, but I strongly suggest you head on over and check it out.

I couldn’t help but wonder what applications his advice has for churches in general and youth ministry in particular.

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