Our Executive Team had a meeting this morning and during our discussion our Senior Pastor, Mike Ramsdell, posed some questions to help us evaluate where we are right now as a church. One stuck out to me in particular.
How is God being honored in our church?
My comment was that I answer that question a bit differently than I might have a few years ago. My mind was immediately drawn to individuals who have shared with me how this church is blessing their life and directing them in their journey of faith.
Two weeks ago in my message, I shared one of those moments.
Several weeks ago I got an email from a mom in our church. She wanted to tell me about what her 6 year old had done in response to one of our recent message series where we looked at the Lord’s Prayer. Here is what she said…
My youngest daughter has been diligently trying for weeks to learn the Lord’s Prayer. Well, she finally got it…all by herself at the end of last week. At bedtime, she said the whole thing perfectly without any help from me and boy you would’ve thought she won the lottery…or the Cowboys won the Superbowl…lots of whooping and hollering and victory dances. Too cute, and made me so proud.
So then Sunday at The Well when the service started, she starts nudging me and whispering in her stage-like 6-year-old whisper, “Mommy, The Lord’s Prayer?” “Mommy, The Lord’s Prayer?” “In a minute. In a minute,” I whisper back. I bet she did that a dozen times before it was time to say The Lord’s Prayer. Then, she was absolutely beaming that she’d been able to say it out loud correctly with the Congregation for the first time.
I can’t think of a better illustration for how God is being honored by our church!
This past Sunday morning, every seat in the house was taken during our 11:00 service we call The Well. All of our extra chairs were set out and there were even some standing in the back. Just 5 months into this new service, we are filling it up almost every weekend which is an amazing blessing.
And yet, it’s also a challenge!
In four weeks it will be Easter, and our regular Easter crowd multiplies our regular weekend crowd by 2 1/2 times. Many of those are families who may be visiting from out of town, visitors who are checking out the church for the first time as well as friends that members of our church invite to our Easter celebration. We are honored by every individual who chooses to worship at First Methodist Mansfield on Easter!
Now, all of our other four weekend services will have plenty of seats on Easter. Saturday Night is a great opportunity to be in worship during that weekend. We have about 750 in that service last year and we could double that. Our 8:15, 9:30 and 11:00 services in the sanctuary are very large on Easter, but there will be room for more and those services will all be outstanding!
But if you’ve been attending the Well, and you want to share that experience with a friend, I want to make sure that can happen.
So here is the challenge I shared with the 240 who were present this last Sunday morning!
On Easter, we will have two opportunities to be present at The Well.
We will have our regular 11:00 service in the chapel as well as an identical service at 12:30 p.m. If 12:30 p.m. could work for your schedule, I want to ask you to consider making that change for this Sunday to make room at the 11:00 a.m. hour. We should have plenty of seats at 11:00 so if you have family and friends you would like to invite on Easter, that would be a great service to invite them too also.
Wake up late, have a nice brunch with the family and come join us at 12:30!
Wouldn’t it be great to fill our Chapel twice on Easter Sunday?
Love carried a cross, love was betrayed,
love saw a close friend, deny his name
Yet love surrendered, love remained,
and gave his life, gave his life away
Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins
You could have called your angels, to carry you away
From the hurt of our words, from the nails we made
Still you surrendered, love remained, and gave his life, gave his life away
Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your Love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins
You are Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins, Love wins
Two weeks ago we rolled out our new GPS daily Bible reading guide. As a supplement to that resource, we are also going to be recording a podcast with myself, our Senior Pastor Mike Ramsdell, and Kevin Selle, a member of our church who works in broadcasting.
Each week, this program will include some reflections from Mike and I on the previous week’s messages as well as some insights and key ideas to look for in the daily readings you find in your GPS guide.
If you would like to give that new podcast a listen, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like more information about subscribing, click here.
By the way… at the end of this latest recording, I reference a sermon that Mike preached about a year ago on the Temptation of Christ in Matthew 4. It’s one of the best I’ve ever heard, and available on our website here if you would like to listen to it.
By the time this posts on Saturday morning, I will be heading to Fort Worth for the Cowtown Marathon. Along with several friends from our Saturday morning men’s group and one of my best friends who lives in Dallas, we are going to attempt to conquer the 13.1 half marathon track today.
I will let you know if I survive.
UPDATE: I’m not walking really well, but I finished!
This is the last in a series of posts with ideas on how to implement the GPS Bible reading guide. So far, I’ve written about the need to find a specific time each day to spend in daily devotion, the importance of establishing a “sacred space” for you to focus, and spending time reflecting over the scripture that you have read. Today I want to talk about creating an “archive” of our devotional life.
About four years ago, the fruit that I was experiencing in my life as a result of my daily disciplines increased dramatically. Key to that change for me was that I started journaling. In fact, I started carrying a small black journal with me almost everywhere I went. I now have a stack of about 10 of these black journals in my office which represent the ups and downs of the last four years of my life.
I had never been serious about keeping a journal prior to this, and I frankly did not understand how it could be of benefit. Today, I would describe the benefit in this way.
We often assume that the benefit of our daily devotion time is that we will get a chance to hear from God every day and receive direction from God for that day. Now, that does certainly happen. This time for me usually happens in the mornings, and the days when I have a dedicated time with God, my day goes smoother.
But there is something much larger going on here than investing in that particular day.
To engage in a daily time with God is to invest in every day for the rest of your life. In other words, the fruit that we receive from this discipline is often “slow developing” but at the same time, “long lasting.” Understanding how God is speaking into our lives and directing us by God’s grace over the course of time is just as important as receiving something for that particular day.
Journaling facilitates this more subtle process, and I truly believe that staying committed to this daily discipline is fueled by the fruit that grows slow. If you miss this fruit because you are not paying attention to it’s growth, I think that increases the chances that this new discipline will fade.
Buy a journal.
Share your thoughts.
Archive where God is leading you in your life.
This week I’ve been writing a series of posts with some ideas on how to implement and use the GPS daily Bible reading guide. So far, I’ve written about the need to find a specific time each day to spend in daily devotion as well as the idea of establishing a “sacred space” for you to focus. Today, I want to talk about one of the most critical elements of this process we might think of as “reflection.”
The pace of our modern lives does not lend itself to spending a great deal of our time in reflection. Consequently, for many of us, it has become a foreign idea. In the context of daily Bible study, we might think of reflection in two different ways.
First, reflection is simply engaging in serious thought and consideration. It implies that we are giving an ample amount of time as well as the appropriate amount of “brain space” to thinking about what we have read and what God might be saying to us as we engage the Bible. Establishing “sacred space” is a key element of this in that serious thought also implies the elimination of other distractions. In this way, we might think of reading and studying the Bible as focusing on a beautiful piece of art or the experience of soaking up the image of a beautiful mountain sunrise. It’s about taking time to appreciate the full picture.
We might also think about reflection in another way. None of us have ever seen our own faces, and yet we all have some sense of what we look like because we have seen a reflection of ourselves. In the same way that we might look into a mirror to understand what we look like so we also look into the Bible to see who we are in light of the word from God that we find there. In other words, reading the Bible is about growing in the knowledge of God, but it also about growing in our understanding of ourselves. We are meant to find ourselves in the story, and allow that story to speak truth into our lives.
Let me give you an example of what that looks like.
When I first became serious about studying the Bible my freshman year of High School, my youth pastor gave me a really easy to remember process for engaging in reflection. The process he outlined for me was centered around three simple questions.
What does this text say about God?
What does this text say about us?
What does this text say about the relationship between God and us?
He even gave us an acronym to remember these three questions: GUR. [God, Us, Relationship] This process of reflection still guides me today, and I share it with the hopes that it might be a benefit to others as well.
Tomorrow, I will share the last post of this series in which I will be talking about the benefiting of creating an “archive” of our walk with God.
Yesterday, I started this series of posts to share some ideas on how to implement and use the GPS study guide that our church launched this past weekend. If you are not familiar with GPS, you can find more information here.
In that first post, I talked about the importance of establishing a set time each day to spend time in study and reflection. I truly believe having a specific time, regardless of when it falls during your day, will help keep you committed to this important practice.
Today, I want to write about establishing “sacred space,” where you might go during that time each day.
My wife is a third grade teacher, and one of the things she does prior to every school years is spending some time setting up her room for her kids. What I discovered that first year in helping her was that there is a certain science involved in how you “set up” an elementary age classroom. Everything was placed in the room in such a way that would create a great learning environment for the kids that would help them to focus on their work and limit any distractions from that key task.
In short, when setting up a classroom for 3rd graders, environment matters.
I think the same thing is true when we think about our daily devotion time.
For instance, I’m writing this post early Wednesday morning from my house where I usually have my daily devotion time. I’m sitting at a small bistro table we have set up in the corner of our living room. I have my headphones on with some soft music playing in the background. I have my morning coffee sitting beside me, the lights are dim, and it’s still dark outside. In short, there is nothing to distract me from my primary goal of focusing on God.
In talking with our Senior Pastor Mike on Monday, he shared with me that his “sacred space” is his front porch when the weather cooperates. Other times, it’s his chair in the living room. I remember several years ago hearing a pastor talk about the “prayer closet” he had constructed for himself in his garage. With five kids at home, the garage was the only place where he could find some quiet in order to focus, and so he had built himself a small room in the garage where he could go.
There are thousands of different ways in which to create sacred space. The key is to find one that fits you. With just a few small adjustments [it does not have to involve a construction project] I think you will find it easier for you to focus and listen to what God might be saying to your heart during your devotional time.
I want to encourage you to think about how you might create, “sacred space.”
Some of you may already be doing this, and I would love to hear about what you are doing. If you would like, please leave me a comment below. Your space may be a source of inspiration for someone else checking out this post. You may also email me if you would like.
Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about the importance of “reflection” in our daily time with God.
