Preaching at the Commons...

I meant to post this last week, but got busy and forgot. But April 10, I drove to my friend Steve Bezner's church in Fort Worth and preach for Steve at the Commons Church. The Commons is a recent church plant who has been public since July and has been meeting in an intermediate school for the last couple months. This church is genuinely seeking to reach Fort Worth for Christ- to provide a relevant & relational place for families to know Christ, grow in their relationship with Christ and multiple disciples. It was a great experience to get to meet with them, to preach and challenge and encourage this church as they grow and as they anticipate what God has in store for them in the future.

I know that many of you who are reading my blog are doing so in order to keep up with Bethany and me- and so I just wanted to share this video of the sermon I preached there (Video Website), but also to encourage any of my Facebook friends or Twitter followers who are living in Ft Worth to check out The Commons Church (Church Website), and for those that don't to encourage you to be in prayer for Steve, for the Commons and for Fort Worth.

4/20...

Yesterday was 4/20. This day is known for different things around the world. Hitler's birthday- a once wildly celebrated "holiday" in German culture- now one synonymous with evil (read this article- great Op Ed- concerning Hitler and a now German Theological Hero- Dietrich Bonhoeffer). The 1999 Columbine School shootings happened on 4/20. 4/20 is also National Weed Day. Yesterday Bethany subbed at the Jr High and a lot of kids were wearing green. Bethany jokingly asked if they had moved St Patricks day or something- the 12-14 year olds in her class giggled and one told her- "no miss, it's national weed day." So proud Jr High Students are wearing green to support this day. 4/20 for me marks my brother in-law's birthday- Happy Birthday Will!

But 4/20 this year marked our church's Tennebrae service- this service of shadows- where we walk through the Passion narrative scripturally- walking to the cross- from Jesus' last supper with his friends- in which we participate in taking the Communion Elements- for me a shockingly realistic experience this year- thinking about this being the last meal with a friend before he was to die. We read through the Garden of Gethsemane account, the denial, the trial, and throughout we sang hymns about the reality of this week in the life of Christ.  I was given the responsibility to read the John 19 account about the cross- the mocking, his crucifixion, his death, and finally his being placed into a tomb in a garden. It was a spiritual experience for me to hear for probably at least the 200th time- the Easter story.

But 4/20 & the Tennebrae experience was much different for Bethany last night. Last night Bethany sat with one of our High School students who just recently accepted Christ. And although this freshmen in high school girl has placed her faith in Christ as her Lord and Savior- last night was the first time she heard in detail the Easter story- she had no reference for why we took the Lord's Supper till last night, she was shocked to hear one of Jesus' own disciples took a sword out and tried to kill somebody, she sat with amazement to hear how brutal the cross was and what Jesus went through on her behalf. Most of our teenagers sat and giggled through the service "for old people." But this particular student sat with jaw open in amazement at what her new found Savior had done for HER.

How numb we have come to the story of Christ- his sacrifice and his love for us. I pray that we look on the Easter story this Sunday with the eyes of one hearing it for the first time- again. The Gospel is great news- whether you've heard it for the first time or the 1000th.

"In the gospel we discover that we are far more wicked than we ever dared believe, yet more loved than we ever dared hope." (Timothy Keller)

It was for Freedom...

This week, as I was studying for a sermon I'm preaching on Sunday night over Galatians 5, I was considering the imagery that Paul uses in Galatians of being a SLAVE to the Law. Thats a pretty radical analogy- a pretty harsh metaphor. And so as I was preparing to speak on this passage I was doing some research in order to illustrate a few different stories of slavery- trying to bring this imagery to the forefront of our minds- without just glazing over the metaphor as this distant concept- but one that is abusive & degrading.

I started with a story of an African slave who remembers being kidnapped from his village, thrown on a boat and sold into slavery in a distant land he had never heard of and will tell his story, and then to think his story is one of over what 10 million stories just like his. And although this is shocking & we cringe at the reality that people could have done that to other people- we look at it as a dark cloud on our country's history and treat it as a distant past mistake that we could not be making in our modern day society.

But then as I continued to do research I ran across some shocking truths of modern day slavery. Experts estimate that there are currently 27 million people enslaved worldwide- 80% of which are women and children sold into not just manual labor type slavery but into sex slavery.

I ran across this video- I won't show this in my sermon Sunday- but we should be aware of this- and we as the church should do something about it. Because "It was for freedom that Christ set us free..."

You can visit their website at love146.org

love protects. love defends. love restores. love empowers.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven...

On Wednesday nights in our Student Ministry we are doing a series called DUST- focusing on the saying "May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi, Jesus" - the idea that we follow our rabbi so closely that we are covered in his dust- that we don't just know what he knows, or do what he does, but that we become like Him. And so we are looking at the ways Jesus taught His disciples to follow Him- these core spiritual disciplines and this week we focused on prayer. The obvious text was from Matthew 6- the Lord's prayer- but I didn't want this to be overlooked by our students as a "religious prayer"- something that has become meaningless because we have said these words so often- so I taught line by line through the prayer and then had them "practice" each line of the prayer by writing out a prayer at 6 different stations and doing some physical act that represented that

We took some pics from each station that I thought I'd share.

Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be thy name,

(here we had students write a prayer of praise on a sticky note and pray it as they put it on the wall)

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven

(here students write a prayer for God's will in their life and prayed like they were at the Wailing Wall, wrote a prayer & stuck it in the crack of the "wall"- some pretty awesome prayers written here)

Give us this day our daily bread

(here students wrote a prayer for their needs- and took a piece of BREAD as a sign of God providing for their needs)

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

(here students wrote a prayer for forgiveness and nailed it to the cross)

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

(here students wrote a prayer of where they are tempted & then burned the paper with a candle to symbolize God getting rid of that temptation. This station won the award for most dangerous station)

For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. AMEN

(We finished the circuit where we started with a prayer of Praise:God we praise you because..)

 It was a pretty great night. I couldn't tell whether the teenagers took it seriously or not- it takes a long time to get 50 Junior Highers and 90 High Schoolers through 6 stations- but in reading some of the things they prayed- our students MET with God that night, and that's exciting.

May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus.. as we pray like he taught us to pray.