Update on the “Creed” Series

Last fall at CrossWay we began a major series called “Creed.”  The goal of this series is to explore up close each of the 24 topics in the Mennonite Confession of Faith.  To avoid having a massive, half-year series, we divided it up into miniseries and scheduled some breaks in between.

At the end of 2007, we were just over the halfway mark.  Toward the end of the year, as I was looking ahead to 2008, I had several discussions with some of the leaders at CrossWay and some pastor friends about the direction of “Creed” and our preaching schedule.  We decided together to share the second half of the “Creed” series in a different way.  What we’ll do is plug some of the remaining miniseries into our regular preaching schedule.  Some of the other miniseries will be made available as recordings on CD and on the podcast.  Whenever the recordings are completed, I’ll blog about it.

The reason for the change is simple: While we still believe in the critical importance of the “Creed” series, we’re aware that much of what remains is in-house kind of stuff.  Since we’re focusing on outreach and evangelism, we want to make sure that our Sunday morning messages are something that new Christians and non-Christians can understand and relate to as well as long-time Christians.  While this is completely possible to do by presenting the material in the right way, we decided that it would be much more constructive to schedule some different sermon series and finish out “Creed” as I’ve just described.

Just thought I’d offer that explanation so it doesn’t seem like “Creed” suddenly vanished midway.

Published in: on January 24, 2008 at 10:57 am  Leave a Comment  

Bummer

WordPress just ate one of my posts!

I wrote about having a great lunch yesterday with Merv Stoltzfus, our conference guy.  Don’t feel like writing it all again.  Bummer.

Published in: on January 24, 2008 at 10:04 am  Comments (2)  

Loving God, Loving People

On Sunday at CrossWay Church we continued the series “The Promised Land” by looking at our strategy for accomplishing our church’s mission.  A brief recap to set the context: the purpose of the church is to glorify God.  That happens when we accomplish our mission, which is to make lifelong followers of Jesus Christ in our community and around the world.  And we need a strategy in order to accomplish the mission.  Simply put, our strategy is this: love God and love people.

Not only is loving God and loving people our strategy for accomplishing our mission, but it’s also the only thing we do that lasts for eternity.  No matter how far you go in your career, no matter how rich and famous you become, no matter how popular you are and how much you achieve–none of it matters in eternity.  Even valuable things like faith and hope will come to an end in eternity, because everyone who belongs to Christ will see the Object of our faith face to face, and hope will no longer be necessary because all our hopes will be fulfilled.

But love will remain.  As 1 Corinthians 13:13 says: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”

The only thing we can do to invest in eternity is love.  In Luke 10:25-28, Jesus taught that love is the greatest commandment in Scripture, that all of the Bible can be summed up in the command to love, and that the key to living a full life is love.  The importance–the eternal significance!–of love can never be overstated.

As part of our church strategy, we ask everyone in our membership to love God and love people in five specific ways:

(1) We love God by worshiping Him together with His family.
(2) We love God by developing healthy spiritual habits.
(3) We love people by serving them.
(4) We love people by building friendships with them.
(5) We love God and love people by inviting others to do these first four things with us!

You can listen to the podcast of this message by clicking on one of this site’s links to the CrossWay Podcast.  (You can also use these links to subscribe to the podcast if you’d like.)

Published in: on January 23, 2008 at 5:52 am  Comments (2)  

Strange Twists to the Dr. King Holiday

  • Last week Carolyn was teaching her kindergarten students about Martin Luther King, Jr.  When she explained that Monday was a holiday to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King, one little boy asked: “Does that mean that all the black children don’t have to come to school that day?”
  • Carolyn and I were talking earlier about how we went to a store last year that was having their big “White Sale”… on the Dr. King holiday.  We figured it had to be a strange coincidence.  We went to the same store yesterday and–sure enough–they were once again having their White Sale.  Surely that’s not a sick joke?  But it would be an awfully strange coincidence.  Think I’ll ask their manager.
Published in: on January 22, 2008 at 5:24 am  Comments (2)  

Ocean City Date Night

Tonight Carolyn and I had an old-fashioned teenager-style boardwalk date.  For the first time in our married lives, we hit the arcades on the boardwalk in Ocean City.  It was fun!  We played skee ball, which was the best part.  Carolyn played one of those games where you move the claw which grabs some random junk, and we played a few other games.  The only part we left out was trading in our tickets for worthless stuff.  We’re saving them up so that we can cash them in for some even more worthless stuff.

Then we had a pizza & birch beer dinner at Dough Roller.  It was so good.

And all this while we had a nice, beautiful snow descending on Ocean City.  We capped off a wonderful evening by catching an episode of Voyagers!

Published in: on January 20, 2008 at 12:00 am  Comments (4)  

Best Seasons Ever

What are the greatest seasons in sports history for individual achievement?  ESPN takes a crack at this tough list on their website.  You can read it here.

Published in: on January 18, 2008 at 1:15 pm  Comments (4)  

Hollywood God

Starting on February 10 we’re doing a series at CrossWay called “Hollywood God.”  Carolyn designed the invite cards and placed our printing order online, so they should be here in about a week.  Here’s what they’ll look like:

Published in: on January 16, 2008 at 5:20 am  Comments (6)  

Another Preaching Learning Experience

It seems I’m constantly finding out not only how much I don’t know, but how little I knew there was so much I didn’t know.

Make sense?  Welcome to my world.

Yesterday when I prepared the latest CrossWay podcast, I learned how important it is to wear the right shirt when I preach.  The recording gear we use for the podcast produces a great sound, especially for the price, but on Sunday I didn’t wear the right kind of shirt.

As I worked on the podcast, I kept hearing a swishing noise.  Sometimes my voice would boom, then fade away.  I realized why: the shirt I wore didn’t have buttons or a collar, so I had to clip the mic on my neckline, just under the shirt.  The mic kept rubbing against it and pressing into my throat, giving it a weird and homemade quality.

Who knew that my wardrobe selection would affect our podcast quality?  From now on, I’ve got to remember: Sunday mornings need a collar or buttons.  Just when you thought you’d thunk o’ everything….

Published in: on January 15, 2008 at 4:38 pm  Leave a Comment  

Cowboys, Nachos, and the Way of the Cross

Haven’t blogged in a while.  Lots going on.  A brief recap:

  • On Thursday I spent a day and a night with some other local pastors.  We hung out at a condo on the beach in Ocean City.  We spent time sharing about our current challenges and offering feedback.  Most of the afternoon was used planning a series that we’re all doing together in June.  I’ll keep you posted on that as the details emerge.  It was so great getting to hang out and talk with guys who are going through a lot of the same stuff as I am.  We’re even really close in age, except for old man Daryl: Pastor Daryl from SonRise is 40, Pastor Bryan from the Worship Center is 34, Pastor John from the Gathering Tree is 33, and I’m 32.  Not exactly the typical age range of most pastors meetings!
  • During our Thursday getaway, it oddly worked out just right that all four of us had somewhere to be at 7:00 p.m., so we all headed out to various places before reassembling later that night.  I headed to my in-laws house in Whaleyville where we held the first community group meeting at CrossWay!  We had seven people and a great time.  Good Bible discussion, good sharing, good prayer, good coffee.
  • On Friday night we went to dinner at Station 7 in Pittsville with Josh & Christi Engle.  They wanted to treat us to dinner, but they ended up treating us to dinner that night as well as lunch and dinner the next day, because Station 7′s portions are HUGE.  Carolyn and I both got the Firehouse Nachos, which are some of the best nachos I’ve ever had anywhere.  Jalapenos in every bite!  It was great getting to spend time together, and it was a lot of fun.
  • Saturday was massively relaxing.  Carolyn and I didn’t even leave the house except to take a stroll up the street to the mailbox.  So refreshing!
  • At CrossWay yesterday we talked about the way of life in the Promised Land.  The Promised Land lifestyle is the way of the cross.  Jesus clearly taught in Luke 9:18-27 that being a Christian does not mean luxury, comfort, and ease.  It means sacrifice, service, and commitment.  The cross is not a dead end–it’s the doorway into the Promised Land.  Real life can only come through death.  Without the cross, there is no resurrection.
  • The Dallas Cowboys had one of their greatest seasons ever, only to blow it in their first playoff game.  I’m still stunned.  They really faltered in their last month–if I’m figuring it right, they lost three of their last four games.  Major bummer.  I’d thought that with their first-round bye they’d have time to rest up and heal up, and come out with guns blazing.  I can’t believe how they just fizzled out.  Nevertheless, they had a remarkable season.  I’m proudly wearing my Tony Romo jersey today as a tribute to an exciting year.  (Several of the Training Station parents offered me their sympathy this morning.)  Go Packers!  I hope they crush the Giants by 50 points.
  • Last night Carolyn and I took Pastor John’s three kids to Chuck E. Cheese.  It was so much fun!  It’s amazing how funny and well-behaved those children are.  As always, we totally had a blast hanging out with them.  One of the many funny moments of the evening came when little three-year-old Ben turned to me and asked, “Where’s your wife?”  And for sheer entertainment value, nothing beats his air guitar.  John told me later that one Sunday during the worship service, Ben went up front and joined the praise band as their air guitarist!
Published in: on January 14, 2008 at 11:46 am  Comments (3)  

Netflix

Carolyn and I have officially gone Netflix.

In case you’re not familiar with Netflix, it’s an online movie rental company. They have different monthly plans and you can order DVDs by mail. They come pretty quickly, and a postage paid envelope is included to send them back. You keep a queue full of your movie choices in your online cart, and as soon as you send a movie back, they send the next one on your queue. One of the coolest features is that you can also watch a lot of their stuff online.

The local video store here has decent prices and a decent selection, but the price and selection at Netflix are pretty hard to beat. We chose the plan that’s 14 bucks a month. We can have two DVDs at a time with no monthly limit. We also have unlimited access to watching movies and shows on their website. Pretty good deal.

Last night we watched our first Netflix flick. It was a 48-minute video about London. Definitely not something you’d find on the shelf at a typical video store. Tomorrow we should be getting an old Bill Murray movie that we could never find in stock at Blockbuster. I’ve already watched three episodes online from the first season of “Amazing Stories,” one of my favorite TV shows from the ’80s.

Coming up soon on our queue we have some Carolyn selections, like Cinderella with Julie Andrews, the first season of “Punky Brewster,” and some obscure version of Pride and Prejudice (Carolyn’s got three versions, but Netflix has those three plus another three we’d never even heard of. Sigh. I guess having such a huge selection does have its drawbacks.) Then there’s an old Marilyn Monroe classic, an instructional video on breakdancing (that’d be my pick–gotta keep the skills sharp), Gandhi, and the first season of “Sledgehammer.” Oh, and another instructional video on painting with acrylics. See, when I say it’s a good selection, I’m talking about a good selection!

You can check out Netflix by clicking here.

Published in: on January 10, 2008 at 6:48 am  Comments (10)  
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