~ by the Pastor and guest writers ~
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Worship Opportunities (February 25, 2003) This past Sunday evening we had an excellent crowd who attended our first Taizé service. It was a quite time of prayer, scripture reading, song, and silence. I find these times for quiet reflection to have more meaning as I grow older. Most of us don’t have many opportunities for a quiet time to spend in worship. We are surrounded with cell phones, televisions, and noise from a thousand different directions. I strongly encourage you to be present for our next service on March 23 at 7:00 pm in the fellowship hall. Come join your brothers and sisters for a time of worship. The seasons of Lent and Easter are just around the corner and you will have several worship opportunities. We begin these seasons on Wednesday, March 5 at 6:00 pm with our Ash Wednesday service. Following that we will meet the next five Wednesdays for our Lenten meal and devotional on March 12, 19, 26, April 2, and April 9 at 6:00 pm in the fellowship hall. Come prepared to share a light meal and begin the season of Lent. For too long now Lent has been viewed as a bleak and weary season. What might happen, I wonder, if our Lenten focus was informed by a discipline of fasting from the ways that weary the earth and of feasting on the word and ways of God? I want to mention a special worship service on March 9. This is the Sunday we will celebrate the Lynn Flowers Preschool. Many of you knew and worked with Lynn Flowers. On March 9 we will dedicate our new handbells and celebrate fifty years of this special education program in our church. It will be a wonderful celebration! So…there are a number of worship opportunities over the next several weeks. Come, invite a friend, come as a family, but come…now is the time to worship God.
 Dangerous for the Gospel (February 7, 2003) The words leapt of the page. The “Foreword” of a book usually contains a note to readers explaining why they should read this publication. The first sentence of the Foreword to Sue Mallory’s book, The Equipping Church: Serving Together to Transform Lives, was an eye-opener: “THE POINT OF CHURCH GROWTH IS not to collect new people and cage them with church programs. The goal of church health is not to fatten up church members for show. That was then. This is now. The church exists to equip people in order to release them back into the world, grounded in truth and community, dangerous for the gospel. God has created a new movement of churches that equip people, according to their calling and gifts, to be salt and light in their churches, communities, family, workplace, media, and government—in the whole society.”
Dangerous for the gospel. What would that mean for First Presbyterian Church to be “dangerous for the gospel”? What would it mean for you as a Christian? I don’t have clear answers for these questions but I am doing a lot of praying, reflecting, and study. This idea of equipping the saints for ministry and releasing them back into the world is certainly not new. Spend some time with St. Paul in Ephesians 4:11-13 and you will discover what he had to say about why the church exists. He just might agree that once equipped, we are to be dangerous for the gospel. I want to ask each of you to set aside some time in the next day or two and read the Ephesians text and then go back and read several times the foreword to Sue Mallory’s book I have quoted. After reading both, dialogue with the biblical text and with the quote. Do you agree? Disagree? Why? How is God calling me for service in the church? Keep at it. I will return to this text again and again over the next several months.
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