David’s Bucket

The band is warming up right now and we are putting the finishing touches on a great night of worship… And as an added bonus tonight, Matt is wearing a suit.

Hope you are planning on joining us!

It’s hard to put into words how much the pastoral leadership of our church enjoys what they do. So the four of us decided to put together this short video to illustrate that. I hope you enjoy it.

If you missed Saturday night worship this week, I shared this note in our worship bulletin.

I hope you will be with us this Wednesday as we complete our Advent journey with the lighting of the Christ Candle on Christmas Eve. It is one of the most holy moments of the year as we celebrate again the greatest gift that we have ever received… the fullness of God’s grace and love in the form of a tiny baby named Jesus. It is a reminder that God does incredible work in ways that we least expect, and that nothing can stop this God whose heart is directed towards healing, hope, and restoration.

As we celebrate this season, I cannot help but wonder how God has worked in your life in this past year. In what unexpected ways have you sensed his grace? In what unexpected places have you been met by God’s presence? In what ways are you different because of the work that God is doing in your life?

Brothers and Sisters, hear again these words from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” I hope you leave this sacred space tonight with a sense of encouragement and hope because God has started a “good work” in your life.

I want to encourage each and every one of us as we celebrate this special season and prepare for the new year ahead to take time to offer thanks and praise to God for his love and grace at work in our lives and also asking God again to give us the strength to stay faithful to the journey of growth and transformation that each of us share together.

Friends, we celebrate this week that God came down, and we offer our thanks that he did so in order to lift us up!

That’s how much God loves you and me.

I hope you have a wonderful and blessed Christmas, and I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. It is one of the great honors of my life to share this journey with you!

This Saturday night we will continue our Advent series, “Engaging the Light of Christmas,” with the message, “The Light of Peace.” We will also be lighting the second candle of our advent wreath, the peace candle.

The lighting of the Advent candles* is a very special part of this season for me and I’m happy to be focusing each message clearly on the meaning behind each candle that we light in anticipation of the coming of Jesus. It is a holy moment for the church which we cherish. It binds us together as the community of faith and it draws our attention to the great need we have for Jesus to continue to renew, restore, and rebuild our lives. It’s about the anticipation of his arrival, and the faith we have that he will one day come again.

In this season, we hear again the words of Isaiah.

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.” Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken!” A voice said, “Shout!” I asked, “What should I shout?” “Shout that people are like the grass. Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”
O Zion, messenger of good news, shout from the mountaintops! Shout it louder, O Jerusalem. Shout, and do not be afraid. Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!” Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power. He will rule with a powerful arm. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.

[Isaiah 40:1-11]

*If you have not already picked up our Advent guide, you may do so online by clicking here. This resource has been prepared for individuals and families who would like to create their own Advent Wreath and celebrate the lighting of each of these candles in their homes. I think it’s a wonderful way to participate in the anticipation of this season.

I just finished my weekly lunch with Doug Peak, our Saturday Night worship leader, to plan this coming weekend. We jump around to different eating establishments in Mansfield and decided to try our Jimmy John’s this afternoon which was recently opened by a member of our congregation that attends Saturday Night. I’m not a food critic [and you can definitely already see a little bias in the opinion], but I thought it was hands down the best sandwich in Mansfield. Here’s the #2. 

Jimmy John’s claim to fame is really fresh ingredients and there sandwiches are made super fast. I highly recommend you stop by and tell our friend Cody that he’s done a great job getting this place up and running. Jimmy John’s is located in the strip center on Debbie Lane just before Matlock which also houses Papa Murphy’s Pizza [another place my family loves that was opened by one of our church members.]

While I’m at it, I should also give a shout out to the new location of Charlie’s which is on Broad Street across from the new Hospital. Brent, a regular attender on Saturday, owns both Charlie’s locations and has done a great job with his second shop. Best burgers in town!

John’s Gospel begins with these words…

In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

It is evident that we live in a world that is often marked by darkness… A world that is filled with despair, anxiety, sorrow and fear. It is into this world that Jesus comes bringing something remarkably different…

Into the darkness, Jesus brings light.Into our despair, Jesus brings hope. Into our anxiety, Jesus brings peace. Into our sorrow and loneliness, Jesus brings joy. Into our fear, Jesus brings love.

To celebrate this special season… To participate in the retelling and the reliving of this ancient story is to engage the light that he has brought into our world and still brings to us today.

I hope you will join us during this season as we focus around “Engaging the Light of Christmas” with this series of messages.

November 29th : The Light of Hope

December 6th: The Light of Peace

December 13th: The Light of Joy

December 20th: The Light of Love

*Sermon audio will be linked here following each week.

This weekend in all our worship services we will be marking a very important day that is coming up in December, World AIDS Day. World AIDS day was started in 1988 to increase awareness and focus media and politics’ attention on AIDS, to fight prejudice, improve education and raise money for researches. This year marks the 20th anniversary of this effort. 

Why are we participating in this? 

Because In our world today… 

• Over 30 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS
• In the year 2007, 2.5 million more people became infected with HIV/AIDS
• As of the year 2005, 15.2 million children were orphaned around the world because of HIV/AIDS

But we’re also participating fora  deeper reason… Because we believe that as a community of people who are devoted to becoming deeply committed followers of Jesus, it is not acceptable to God for us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of our world. And if these numbers tell us anything, they are a vivid reminder of the suffering that AIDS is causing around the world. 

John Wesley said it this way. “The World is my Parish.” Now, the language of “the parish” is not something you probably hear everyday. I had an idea of what it meant, but I decided to look the word up anyway. What I found was, “a small administrative district typically having its own church and a priest or pastor,” and consulting the Thesaurus yielded a similar word that we do use on a consistent basis; a community. 

Perhaps this is just another example of how Wesley was ahead of his time, or an insight into the unique place we are in the history of our world today. What I mean by that is this. Today, we truly do live in a global community, and as participants in that global community we have the ability to bring about positive change on a scale unprecedented in the history of humanity. 

Amazingly enough, it is how God has always seen the world, and I believe the invitation of faith encourages us to see it the same. The great social upheaval that is happening in Africa because of AIDS today may be happening on the other side of the world… but it’s still my world… and even more importantly, it’s still God’s world. 

And because God cares about the world, I believe followers of Jesus should as well. 

I hope to see you on Saturday.

I am a big believer in feedback and the idea that the success of any leader depends on the quality of the feedback that she or he receives. In other words, what often hurts your ability to lead more than anything else is that which you do not know. I think that great leaders intentionally work towards learning what they don’t know [obvious part of the statement] which includes hearing unfiltered feedback on how they are performing [don't like that word, but can't think of a better one] as a leader/preacher.

So, brothers and sisters, I’m asking for your help.

Over the next several weeks, I want to design a process for members of my congregation to give me their unfiltered evaluation of the effectiveness of my preaching. At this point, my thought process is to give them a list of questions for them to respond to for each message. I will be asking someone else to recruit these individuals and receive their responses each week they are able to attend for a three month period. I will also share with them the values and principles that guide my approach to preaching so that they can gauge whether those principles are visible in how I communicate.

Today, I want to start with my principles. If you have some time, would you mind sharing your thoughts on this list?

1. What do you think is really important?
2. What is missing from the list?
3. What should be phrased differently?

My Principles for Preaching

• That everything I share is drenched with a sense of God’s grace and love for the listener.
• That the Bible, as a primary source for my preaching, is used in a responsible way that maintains the integrity of the Biblical witness.
• That the way I use the Bible invites the listener to develop a “taste” for further study of the Bible.
• That the listener does not leave completely satisfied, but with an increased desire to learn and grow.
• That Monday is somehow different because of the time the listener has invested.
• That my preaching would serve as an invitation for someone to continue forward in the journey towards becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus.
• That every person leaves worship feeling genuinely encouraged in their life.

After hearing some feedback, I’ll share some of the questions I’m thinking about using.