Disappointment after A Great Weekend

Adventures In Worship
I just got home form the retreat and discovered that all of my mobile blogging did not make it to the website. How disappointing. Well I am TIRED and can't go into detail about things now, but I will. Check back soon.

Later

Have Blog Will Travel

Tonight I leave for the weekend. No it isn't a vacation, but it is a youth group retreat. I always go a day early with our youth pastor (now associate pastor) to help setup for the worship and media stuff. This will be my 11th year spending the last weekend in October with our kids. What a joy and a privelege. For those of you who won't be ther, check back frequently because i will be uploading and posting things and pictures from my phone. That way you may feel like you are here. See you in person on Sunday.

Later

Tivo can be an idol

I love gadgets, but at the same time I am cheap. This is a struggle because I have a desire to own gadgets, but at the same time am hesitant to buy them. I have only owned an iPod for about a year (love it), and I am being driven to a point in my life where I either need a smart phone or a PDA just so I have constant access to my calendar. My parents gave me my Tivo for Christmas two years ago and I have been watching way too much television (not commercials…wooo hooo) ever since. We certainly live in glorious times technologically, but as with any good thing it is possible to corrupt it. As I briefly mentioned, my Tivo and my iPod are distractions from the things in life that I really need to be doing. I am a homeowner and when I am home I have things to do. These things are suffering. The Tivo calls and then I get distracted and lazy. This became apparent to me when the Tivo blew up two weeks ago. Suddenly I realized just how many TV shows that I recorded and then jammed into my free time to watch. In the meantime, my condo has been needing paint, my wall has a hole that need patching, my kitchen cabinets are atrocious. All this AND the lack of time spent with the Lord. All these things are time stealers from spending time reading the Bible. I have felt so convicted about this. I just got the replacement Tivo from the factory on Thursday and just hooked it up on Sunday. My challenge is to not let it become my idol and to get up and do something. I can't worship God in front of the TV. Where is the adventure in that?

Dr. Bryan Chappell and The Gospel

I have to get these thoughts out of my head and onto my blog before I am too far removed form the event. As I have mentioned several times, our speakers over the weekend were excellent. On Saturday night Dr. Bryan Chappell shared with us from John 3:16. I can't remember the last time someone preached a sermon where this was their text. It was a fabulous gospel presentation. To you casual observers of Christianity, it may seem odd to tell a group of believers about the good news of Christ. You would assume that they already know. Most of us do, but we need to be reminded. We need to constantly be brought face to face with exactly what Christ did for us. This isn't because we forget our gift and need to pray the sinners prayer again. It is because we take it for granted. We grow in our faith as we are constantly challenged. We are challenged by continually remembering who we are (sinners) and who God is (savior) and what he did to reconcile us to himself. We need the Gospel everyday, lest we rely on our own works for our salvation. The sermon Dr. Chappell delivered Saturday night was concise and challenging to Christians as it would have been to a non-Christian. This time with his was a glorious declaration of God's love for the whole world and our role as his representatives and vehicle of common grace.

The follow-up on Sunday morning was quite possibly the best sermon I have ever heard in my life. Our text was Isaiah 6. In this chapter we see the prophet confronted with the Holiness of God and his realization of his unworthiness to be in God's presence. I have never heard a more descriptive discussion of the Holiness of our Lord. I was moved in a serious way. The pictures he was painting as he handled the Word caused me to again and again realize just how my sin has separated me from Christ. Then as he continued he described the hot coal used to cleanse Isaiah's lips. The majesty of the temple imagery and the provision that God made for the repentant Isaiah, were amazing. How can we respond in any other way but to worship Him and desire to be sent on His behalf as a servant of the Gospel. I can't wait to get copies of the audio and listen to them both again.

What a blessing this weekend has been. It will be so hard to sum up all of the things that have gone on. In my last post I mentioned that Dr. John Armstrong spoke at the Friday night event. I just want to attempt to condense what he said about the church universal and our church specifically.

1. We need to be inspirational. We need to build our Sunday mornings to charge the faithful up to face the world the rest of the week. I feel that our services are pretty good at this. Our times of song and reflection are good, our adherence to the Word in the preached word is there as well. If I was assessing our body, I would say that we are safe on this action item. Although life always allows room for improvement.
2. We need to be invitational. We need to open the church to those who are not Christians. This is a tough one for me and many others. Now a casual reader may not understand what I am talking about, but this is really counter cultural in many ways to most of Christendom. We like to see church as our fortress, our safe haven. Parents look at it as a place where they can drop their kids off and not worry about them being exposed to the cultural sins that are running rampant in the schools, malls and neighborhoods. They don’t want their children exposed to those who are drug users, or those that smoke or curse. We create this environment that says, “you can come here, but act differently so that you will fit into our cultural requirements. You better behave. And don’t even ask to be involved in anything, unless you just want to sit in the pew.” Because everything we do in the church is under a heading where the word ministry follows a title, you have to be a Christian to participate. He drew the example of an usher. Do your ushers have to be saved? This is so completely counter cultural to the established traditions and practices of the church. We need to have a spirit of invitation, a spirit that says we want you to be here. We want you to be in this building. We can do this while also not compromising on the preached word.
3. We need to be missional. We need to view our lives as a mission, and our church as a mission. Not rely on the pastor, or our missionaries, or our staff to do the mission work. We need to be invitational to get the non believer in our lives, and then we need to be missional to show them the love of Christ. We need to present the gospel in this missional period of relationship. I know that there is a friction between those who adhere to the gospel as relationship and the gospel as truth. I would guess that the answer lies in a mix of both. Isn’t it amazing that as the theologians continue to debate, the Holy Spiris continues to draw men to himself. Where it isn’t our effort or knowledge, or sales techniques that save man, it is our being vessels used by God to deliver that gospel that saves. We need to be missional in our relationships, but to declare the truths in them at the same time.

I am sure that my summary lacks many of the points that Dr. Armstrong made, but I hope I caught the spirit. What a privilege to meet the man and spend some brief time with him in the van ride from the airport (even if it was late), and what a greater privelge to be ministered to by him on Friday night. I was not able to listen to him at other times over the weekend because of various responsibilities, but I will be getting the tapes and listening to them.

So this brings me to Saturday night and Sunday morning with Dr. Chappell. Let me sum it up and just say WOW and I’ll expound on that at a later time. I've got to get going to our big finale event at the church tonight. We are having a big dinner and then watching a video retrospective and then singing some great songs. Blog at you later. Oh and if your reading, let me know.

Thanks

GRPC 20th Year Celebration Day 1

This weekend is my Church's 20^th anniversary. I have attended for 11 of those years, although my routes with the congregation go back farther to a different church. It was a fun time, but not in your regular "we hung out" sort of Friday night event. It started with a dinner in the Family Life Center, and then we moved to the candle lit sanctuary. There our Music Minister put on a mini concert of piano music from his recent CD. It was quite and reflective, and for those who need to be entertained all the time, it probably bored them. I found it to be a refreshing time of just being spoken to by the music. It's a amazing the sound that can come from one instrument and the hands of a man. This makes me think of the detail that God built into his creation. The little things that add depth to life are so over looked in our everyday journey. Colors, sounds, smells, the little things that come together to create our experience in this world. It makes out lives 3 dimensional and allows us to experience God through the context of our senses.

 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalm 139:14

 

How often do I just forget to look at creation and know that the Lord was in those details? Gods fingerprints were in that piano last night, in the way that two or three notes played together created sounds that could make our hearts rise and fall. We didn't sings joyous songs, or get excited by drums and guitars, but I did praise God through that music last night. I'll blog more on our speaker (Dr. John Armstrong) and the things that he shared with us later today or tomorrow. I think he really threw done the gauntlet for our church. I can't wait to hear what Dr. Byan Chapell has to say tonight.

 

Bye for now.

RAV

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I am in airport punishment. I came to pick up Dr. John Armstrong and his flight is gonna be four hours late.

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I am home now (12:45 am). Dr. Armstrongs flight came in around 11pm and then I drove him to his hotel. I can't believe I spent 5 hours in the airport. Dr. Armstrong was a nice man, but he looked tired from his ordeal as well. The ironic thing is that, he could have driven from DC to DE and back again in the time this trip took. Oh well, now we can focus on him speaking at GRPC this weekend for our 20th anniversary. I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to say. I am especially looking forward to hearing Bryan Chapell speak. I really enjoyed him the last time he visited. Now I need to sleep.

RAV

Adventures In Worship

Adventures In Worship

So at the request of some friends and fellow bloggers on other blog sites, I have removed the registration requirement from my blog. I have also added the verification step though (where you have to type the phrase from a picture in). This will help me weed out bots posting. Also, your comments will be sent to me via email for my approval. That way I can make sure that any nasty things stay of the site. So, enjoy everyone.

Funerals...I hate them

I have to go to a funeral today. My grandmother’s sister (my great aunt) died on Monday after a long battle with lung cancer. My grandmother has a big family and my aunt was only a couple years older than my mom, and the two of them were really good friends. Its weird to think that my grandmothers younger sister died. It really makes me realize that as the oldest sister she won’t be around forever. I hate funerals. I really hate family funerals. You see all your cousins that you maybe see once every two years. It feels like they are really more acquaintances than family. This is sad to me, but at the same time it feels “real”. I don’t really know how to explain that, but to quote my favorite phrase of late….”It is, what it is.” We don’t dislike each other; we just don’t seem to desire relationships with each other. No common ground in life other than blood. Speaking of blood, I am getting ready to go meet my sister so that we can ride over together. I pray that I can in some way reflect Christ to those there. I am known in the family as a Christian, but they avoid the subject. I probably just avoid them, rather than confront as well. I pray that this will change. Its funny, I am listening to a random mix in iTunes and the song Instrument of Peace just came on. The lyrics that stick out:

Make me an instrument of peace

Make me a vessel of your love

Make me a minister of reconciliation in this world

Make a picture of your grace

Make me a portrait of your face

Make me a minister of reconciliation in this world

It seems that the lyrics are challenging me as I write this blog. Lord let this be my prayer.

So with that I will bog later. Have some good times planned later with some people at my favorite coffee hang out.

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My parking lot. Kinda boring.

My New Blog

So I have been using another blogging software, but I wanted to try something new I discovered and it has a great link up feature with Blogger, so I am trying this out for a bit to see how I like it. Here we go.

Some of my friends.

So me and some of my buds (pictured above) went to a Corn Maze in Lancaster, PA on Saturday. I snapped this picture afterwards at Fuddruckers. K took some pictures while we were there with her nifty camera. If she sends them to me, I may post some of them.