Currently we are in the process of updating the web site. Hopefully we will have changes made within the next couple of weeks.

Many of us value prayer but don’t feel like we know how to pray. If you need direction in this area, like most of us do, there are some very helpful, concise articles that give practical guidance on prayer here: How to pray/other resources .

Praying daily written prayers can also be a helpful tool. But in “reading” the prayers that someone else has written, it is important that we are not just going through the motions; we must make these written prayers our own. If we do, the daily prayers, largely based off the psalms, found here at The Divine Hours can be of incredible value.

One Last Prayer Resource:

• Lectio divina

To learn more click here or the above ad.

Some Disturbing Facts about Slavery:
• 27 million people are in modern-day slavery across the world*
• There are more people in slavery now than during the trans-Atlantic slave trade*
• 800,000 people are trafficked across international boarders each year*
• 50% of all victims are children*
• 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the U.S. every year
• 91 cities in the United States report cases of trafficking

*Source: www.amazingchange.com/statistics.html

Church Canceled Feb. 25th!

 

Due to extreme weather conditions our Sunday services (Feb. 25, 2007) and Sunday school classes are canceled tomorrow morning.

This coming week we will be starting a new sermon series entitled: Questions I Was Afraid to Ask

The topic of our first week is the Bible, the sacred text of our faith. In the Covenant church we hold the Holy Scriptures to be the “Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.”

This is a given. But simply because this is at our foundation does not mean there are not questions about why this is the case. Not surprisingly, though, some may be afraid to broach such questions as the ones we will explore on Sunday–questions such as:

Where did the Bible come from?

What’s the big deal about it?

And can it be trusted?

Come join us Sunday as we explore these questions and seek some answers.

This come from Howard Snyder’s website via Church of the Exiles:

The following ten “Theses on Renewal” from Liberating the Church summarize my most basic convictions about the nature and calling of the church—and what is needed for its renewal. In more recent books I have
amplified some of these points and added other accents (for instance, the importance of a Trinitarian perspective), but virtually everything I have written on the church and the Kingdom of God is contained at
least embryonically in these ten theses:

• The fundamental crisis of the church today is a crisis of the Word of God. The church must recover the full dynamic of the Word, not just as Scripture, but as God-in-communication, especially through the written Word of Scripture and supremely through the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. This is another way of saying the church must recover a consciousness of who God is.
• Behaviors and structures in the church reflect fundamental concepts in the church’s self-understanding which often remain unarticulated.
• The church is essentially the community of God’s people, not primarily an organization, institution, program, or building. This is a distinction of fundamental importance because it is linked to the basic models of the church which Christians employ.
• The experience of salvation is incomplete and not fully biblical without genuine experience of the church as the community of God’s people and agent of the Kingdom.
• The most dynamic and prophetic thing the church can do is first of all to be a worshiping and serving community.
• Every believer is a minister, servant and priest of God. Every believer is called to ministry, and all God’s people must be equipped to minister.
• Every believer receives grace for ministry. Therefore spiritual gifts must be identified and employed to God’s glory.
• Leadership grows out of discipleship. Where careful discipling is lacking, leadership cannot be biblical and a crisis of spiritual leadership results. Worldly qualifications for leadership replace biblical ones.
• The church’s concern for and identification with the poor are sure signs of its faithfulness to the Kingdom and are often signs of fundamental renewal.
• In North America today a vital, biblically faithful church will be a countercultural community living in tension with the non-Christian elements of society and marked by a lifestyle that is distinctively Christ-like and Kingdom oriented.

Howard A. Snyder, Liberating the Church: The Ecology of Church and Kingdom (InterVarsity Press, 1983), 17-18.

via The Forgotten Ways

Technorati Tags: Howard Snyder, church health, church, theology

The following quote by the late theologian Stanley J. Grenz gives insight as to why theology in the church is so important. It is also why the integrity of church leaders must not be compromised in order to see “results”:

“Solid theological reflection is crucial in the practice of ministry, understood both narrowly as the work of ordained leaders and in the wider sense of being the whole life and mission of the people of God. Actually, today the chief rival to ministering from a theological base is engaging in the practice of “church” by means of a pragmatic outlook, that makes decisions largely if not solely on the basis of a consideration of what “works.” In the long run, however, the pragmatic approach is self-defeating, simply because it transforms the community of faith into an institution whose chief end is not the glory of God and the fulfillment of a divinely-given mandate, but survival. The long-term health and viability of the church demands that its leaders and people return again and again to the forming and informing vision of what the community of Christ is called, mandated, and empowered to be by the Lord of the church. Above all, I would add, we are called to be a people who embody in our life together and in our relationships to all humans and even to all creation the great narrative of the biblical God, the one who has come to us in Christ and now empowers us through the Holy Spirit poured out in our hearts and in our fellowship.”

via

A quote from Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton:

“God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept God utters in me, if I am true to the thought I was meant to embody, I shall be full of God’s actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in God.”

via

A week or so ago I listened to Bono’s message that he gave to the national prayer breakfast in Washington, DC recently. It is worth watching. You can watch it below.

One of the most salient things Bono shared was how he used to always be asking God to bless what he was doing…bless his work, his albums, his concerts, etc. He then shared that one day he had a wake-up call. He was talking with a wise mentor of his and his friend told him: “Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Get involved with what God is already doing because he has already blessed that.”

What if we all did this? What if we all, instead of asking that God pay attention to us and bless us, what if instead we started paying attention to God and what he was already blessing and got involved?

Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about the language we use in worship and prayer. Often times I find myself, or hear others, praying that God would reveal himself, or make his presence known, or show up in a worship service. I never used to question this sort of language.

But recently I have begun to think that we have it backwards. God is always present. We know this as Christians. God is “omnipresent.” But more to the point, in the words of Jesus, “the kingdom of heaven” is at hand and wherever two or more are gathered in his name he is there with us. The scriptures make it clear: God is accessible and present to us all, in our joy and grief and poverty and persecution.

The question, therefore, should not be whether God is present to us. The question should be whether we take the time, and make the space, to be present to God. And the reason this is important has to do with whether God will be able to use you and your gifts.

Many people wonder how to use their gifts and how to do God’s will. This is my advice: Make yourself present to God so you can be a blessing to the world.

Pastor Matt