imagining

[Sermon from Joshua House at Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

Advent is about remembering and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. Advent is also about anticipating and preparing ourselves for the promised return of the Messiah. And continuing on the Advent series, “Down to Earth,” today, my sermon is titled, “Jesus Came to Bring God’s Kingdom.” So let’s pray and then dig right in.

Before we look at the birth of Jesus and the very beginning of his days here on earth, I want to take you briefly to the very last days of his life on earth and look at three images, three scenes from the life of Jesus, and I want you to store these images somewhere in your mind because they will serve as a backdrop to what we are going to be talking about for the rest of the evening.

The first scene is that of Jesus triumphantly entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. A very huge crowd gathers to see this prophetic scene played out before their very eyes. Their hearts of full of hope and anticipation, and they are waving palm branches, and they are shouting in unison:

[Sermon from Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent season. In the church year, Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. It’s hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner!

I love this season. I really do. I love to see families and friends come together to celebrate and catch up after a year of being apart. I love to decorate the Christmas tree and drink $10 cups of holiday drink from Starbucks. But you know what I am beginning to hate more and more every year? I’m sure many of you here will relate to this. I hate the crazy long lines no matter which store you go to. I don’t know where these people are during the rest of the year, but they all show up at the one store that I want to go to, and of course, they buy the very things that I am trying to buy.

Somewhere in history, Christmas has become the best friend of the retail industry. The National Retail Federation expects consumers to spend $437 billion this Christmas. Compare that number to $2.7 billion that was given to victims of hurricane Katrina or the $2.8 billion that was given to 9/11 charities.

[Painting of Paul preaching in Athens by Raffaello Raphael Sanzio]

This fall, I am leading the preaching mentoring class for 9 first-year students at Vineyard Leadership Institute (VLI). Since this is my first time leading a preaching mentoring class, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts on what I am learning in the process of teaching others how to preach.

First, a quick overview of the class: We are meeting once a week for 7 weeks. Each class begins with a short teaching followed by 3 students who will preach a 15-minute sermon, which is then followed by a 15-minute evaluation. With this schedule, each student will preach 2 sermons. For the first sermon everyone will preach from the same passage (Luke 5:1-11). And for the second sermon, the student can choose whatever passage they want. Here is what the schedule looks like:

1. Introduction
2. Objective of Preaching
3. Text and Thesis
4. Structure and Flow
5. Introductions and Conclusions
6. Illustrations and Applications
7. Open Q&A

For the class text, I am using the VLI Preaching Manual written by Steve Robbins (director of VLI) as well as the Preaching Manual that Rich Nathan wrote which I referenced HERE.

Last week, Vineyard Columbus launched its first ever satellite campus. We are thrilled to report that the campus drew over 470 people! Beyond just the numbers, we are hearing some amazing stories of people who stepped into a church for the very first time, people experiencing the love of Jesus for the very first time.

Today, I am reminded again of these words of Jesus: "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

On September 13th, Vineyard Columbus will be launching its first ever satellite campus in Sawmill, about 15 minutes from the main campus in Westerville.

In its 20 years as a church, Vineyard Columbus has planted over 25 churches, but this is the very first satellite campus. Unlike a church plant, the satellite campus will still be a part of Vineyard Columbus, sharing its mission and vision, as well as the leadership and resources. The campus will have its own campus pastor with local small groups. We will video tape the sermon from the Saturday night service to show at the satellite campus on Sunday morning.

So, why a satellite campus instead of a church plant? One of the biggest reasons is that the satellite campus model will create more service opportunities for people who may have a desire to step out but may feel uncomfortable joining a new church plant. It has most of the benefits of planting a church, but with lower risks. Here are some stats about the multi-site churches according to the Christian Standard:

[Sermon from Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

Standing at 29,029 feet, Mt. Everest is the highest peak on the planet! And it was on May 29, 1953, at 11:30am that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people ever to climb this glorious peak. And since that day, there have been over 2700 people who have reached the summit of Mt. Everest. And while these 2700 people were able to go back home with some pretty amazing bragging rights, there are over 200 people who have perished attempting this treacherous climb, of which there are close to 150 bodies that were never recovered.

The quest to climb Mt. Everest demands the absolute best of those who attempt it. It takes over a year just to prepare your body and mind to make this climb as you are stretched to the absolute limits of what you can handle mentally and physically. And not only the training, but the financial burden is no small matter, as the required permit alone costs over $20k. Not to mention all the equipment and supplies. The quest to climb Mt. Everest means that everything else in your life takes a backseat. For a solid year, anyone who dares to climb Mt. Everest must have a singular focus. It demands everything of those who dare to climb.

[Sermon from Joshua House at Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

I came across the lyrics of a song written by a man named Mac Davis. The song is entitled “It’s hard to be humble.” I would like to read the lyrics of this song to you. So, sit back and listen to the heart-touching lyrics of this beautiful ballad:

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. I can’t wait to look in the mirror ‘cause I get better lookin’ each day. To know me is to love me, I must be a heck of a man. Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble, but I’m doin’ the best that I can. I used to have a girlfriend but I guess she just couldn’t compete with all these love starved women who keep clamoring at my feet. Well I probably could find me another but I guess they’re all in awe of me. Who cares I never get lonesome ‘cause I treasure my own company. I guess you could say I am a loner, a cowboy all locked up and proud. Well I could have lots of friends if I wanted, but then I wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Some folks say that I’m egotistical - heck I don’t even know what that means. I guess it has something to do with the way that I fill out my skin tight blue jeans.

Mohammed Ali, the famous boxer, once said:

When you’re as great as I am, it’s hard to be humble!

Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN, once remarked:

In my last post, I recommended Rich Nathan's Preaching Manual to anyone who is just getting started in preaching. Since I know you probably won't get through all 136 pages any time soon, I wanted to highlight one short section in the Manual titled "Advice to Young Preachers."

[Excerpt from Rich Nathan's Preaching Manual]

1. Preach books of the Bible for the first 4-5 years of your preaching ministry.
Most young preachers really struggle with putting series together. That issue is dealt with if you preach through a book. It is an amazing stress reducer to know that next week's sermon is going to be James 1:11-16 because you just finished James 1:1-10. Moreover, preaching through a book will keep young preachers from the great mistake of preaching Christian books that they have just read or sermons they have just heard from someone else, rather than preaching the Bible. Book studies also create in you the habit of bridging the gulf between the world of the Bible and the world of today. Most contemporary preaching is completely unconnected to the world of the Bible and too quickly moves to application.

2. Be yourself!
Don't take on someone else's persona. Virtually every preacher has his or her own kind of charm. It could be that you are funny, or warm and pastoral, or intense and convicting-but whatever you are, let it shine through. God wants to use you, not some "preacher person" that you are trying to become.

There were several reasons why I wanted to work for Rich. On top of that list was to learn how to become a better preacher. And having worked for Rich for the past year and four months, I can say that I do not know of anyone who puts in more time, energy, and effort into his preaching than him. Rather than me telling you how Rich prepares his sermons, I want to recommend that you read the paper that Rich wrote on preaching titled, "Preaching As If It Were A Matter of Life and Death."

[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PAPER]

This is a preaching manual that Rich wrote for a conference of the same title that he does occasionally with David Parker and Don Williams. It is an extensive manual (136 pages) that covers every aspect of preaching with a great list of resources for further study. If you are involved in preaching in any context, I would highly recommend that you read this.

Some of My Favorite Books on Preaching

[Sermon from Joshua House at Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

One of the most striking stories in the Bible, for me, is found in Luke chapter 7. It is the story about a woman, who the author Luke makes the deliberate point to describe as a “sinful woman.” This woman hears that Jesus was eating at the house of this religious leader, a gathering where people of her caliber were clearly not welcome. But still, she must see Jesus. As she gets closer to this house where Jesus is eating, she sees that there is a crowd gathered around this house. And seeing the crowd, her heart sinks. She sees how people are looking at her with disgust in their eyes. She can feel on her skin their indignant judgment. She can taste in her mouth their foul whispers and murmurs. But still, she pushes through. She has come here on a mission. She makes her way through the crowd, carrying in her hands the most valuable thing that she owns, a jar of perfume that is worth about a year’s salary. And quietly, with love and adoration in her heart and tears of joy in her eyes, she walks right up to Jesus, gets on her knees, and begins clean the feet of Jesus with her tears and her hair. And after all the dirt has been wiped clean from his feet, she gently kisses them and lavishly pours this precious perfume on the feet of Jesus.

VineyardUSA is launching a new initiative, the Society of Vineyard Scholars (SVS).

Here is the description from the website: We are gathering the thinkers and scholars of our movement to "think theologically" in community — both in order to address the critical questions of the moment and to put down theological and intellectual roots for the long haul. Our expectation is that doing this well involves building a diverse, interconnected community of scholars, pastors, and scholar-pastors within our movement. Ultimately, our desire is both to deepen our theological reflection and to broaden our engagement with our culture. Towards these ends, we anticipate holding conferences and other events to provide forums for collaborating and sharing intellectual work as well as pursuing other ways of facilitating connections among current Vineyard seminarians, graduate students, and scholars.

The Theology and Practice of the Kingdom of God: Justice, Power, and the Cross

Location: Houston, Texas (changed from Columbus, Ohio)
Dates: February 11-13, 2010 (changed from October of 2009)

This last May, VineyardUSA hosted its biennial national conference for its pastors and leaders in Galveston, Texas. VineyardUSA is offering the audio for all the main sessions for free on their website.

09 National Conference Resources
Click HERE for free resources from the 09 National Conference. Speakers include Bert Waggoner, Cherith Fee-Nordling, Don Williams, Jay Pathak, Wess Stafford, and Rich Nathan.

07 National Conference Resources
Click HERE for free resources from the 07 National Conference held at Anaheim, California. Speakers include Bert Waggoner, Charles Park, Jeff Heidkamp, Lance Pittluck, and a discussion forum with Bert Waggoner, Rich Nathan, Rick Olmstead, Eric Sandras, Thora Anderson, Dianne Leman, Phil Strout and Lance Pittluck.

05 National Conference Resources
Click HERE for free resources from the 05 National Conference held at Columbus, Ohio. Speakers include Bert Waggoner, Dr. Gordon Fee, Rick Olmstead, Dr. Floyd Flake, Julia Pickerill, Dr. Philip Jenkins, Julia Pickerill, and Rich Nathan.

The Necessity of Mentors

One of the most important decisions that a new pastor can make is to obtain a good pastoral mentor. Ministry is a craft. I am unperturbed when new pastors sometimes say, “Seminary never really taught me actually how to do ministry.” I think seminary is best when it instills the classical theological disciplines and exposes to the classical theological resources of the church, not so good at teaching the everyday, practical, administrative and mundane tasks of the parish ministry. One learns a craft, not by reading books, but by looking over the shoulder of a master, watching the moves, learning by example, developing a critical approach that constantly evaluates and gains new skills.

Selecting a mentor can be your greatest challenge as a new pastor. Few experienced pastors have the training or the gifts for mentoring a new colleague. The “Lone Ranger” mentality afflicts many lonely pastors and their work shows the results of their failure to obey Jesus’ sending of the Seventy “two by two” (Luke 10:1).

Here is the rest of my list of unsolicited advice for those moving from seminary to parish:

1. Be open to the possibility that the matters that were focused upon in the course of the seminary curriculum, the questions raised and the arguments engaged, might be a distraction from the true, historic mission and purpose of the church and its ministry.

2. On the other hand, be open to the possibility that the church has a tendency to bed down with mediocrity, to accept the mere status quo as the norm, and to let itself off the theological hook too easily.

One reason why the church needs theology explored and taught in its seminaries is that theology (at its best) keeps making Christian discipleship as hard as it ought to be. Theology keeps guard over the church’s peculiar speech and the church’s distinctive mission. Something there is within any accommodated, compromised church (and aren’t they all, in one way or another?) that needs to reassure itself, “All that academic, intellectual, theological stuff is bunk and is irrelevant to the way the church really is.” The way the church “really is” is faithless, mistaken, cowardly, and compromised.

Recently, I asked a group of our best and brightest new pastors what they would like most from the church and from me as their bishop. I was surprised to hear them all respond: “Supervision!” They yearn for help with the move between these two worlds because they realize the inadequacy of their preparation. Churches and judicatories must take this move more seriously and must develop better means of mentoring and supervising new pastors through this process.

As someone who now works with new pastors on that move from the world of the theological school to the world of the parish, I have some specific suggestions:

1. Devise ways to learn to speak their language. Laity sometimes complain that their young pastor, in sermons, uses “religious” words like “spiritual practice,” “liberation,” “empowerment,” “intentional community” (this is an actual list a layperson collected and sent to me) that no one understands and no one recalls having heard in Scripture. Such “preacher talk” makes the pastor seem detached, alien, and aloof from the people and hinders leadership.

The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon is the Bishop of The United Methodist Church, a post he has held since 2004. He leads the 157,000 Methodists and 792 pastors in North Alabama. For twenty years he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Willimon is a graduate of Wofford College (B.A., 1968), Yale Divinity School (M.Div., 1971) and Emory University (S.T.D., 1973). Here is an excellent entry from his blog that I wanted to pass along to you.

Advice for New Pastors (Part 1)

This past year Allan Hugh Cole, professor at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, has edited a book for new pastors, From Midterms to Ministry (Eerdmans). I was asked to write a chapter in the volume, recounting my own journey from seminary to the parish, drawing out any implications that my experience had for new pastors.

This month, thousands of new pastors will emerge from seminary, a few of them coming to join the ranks of the North Alabama Conference. I therefore offer these thoughts in the next few weeks, hoping that they will be helpful to those of us who are new in the pastoral ministry and those who are not.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Parkside Church (near Cleveland, Ohio) hosted their 10th conference for pastors on preaching from May 11-13 with featured speakers John Lennox, John Piper, and Alistair Begg. I wasn't able to attend but I noticed that they are making all of the resources available from the conference for free on the web. Click HERE to access the resources.

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is also an adjunct Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum. He lectures on Science and Religion in the University of Oxford and teaches at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

[Sermon from Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

I love stories! Don’t you just love stories? I love movies that take you on a marvelous adventure beyond your wildest dreams. I love books that you just can not put down because you just have to find out what happens to your favorite character. I love songs that tell wonderful stories. Believe it or not, my wife Angela got me into country music. I fought it with all my heart for years, but some of the stories in the songs were just so funny and outrageous, I just could not help but fall in love with it. I mean with song titles like these how can you not love country music?

• I Gave Her the Ring, and She Gave Me the Finger
• I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
• I Want a Beer as Cold as My Ex-Wife’s Heart
• I Would Have Wrote You A Letter, But I Couldn’t Spell Yuck!

Whether it’s a memorable movie, a great book, a touching song, or just simply sitting down together with family and friends to talk about the week, I love stories.

The author Karen Blixen says this:

To be a person is to have a story to tell.

And the author Barry Lopez says this:

[Sermon from Joshua House at Vineyard Columbus, Ohio] [Click HERE for the audio of the sermon]

Who can tell me what two presidential candidates were running for office in 1960? And who can tell me why this presidential election was different than any prior election?

The 1960 Presidential Debates between Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy were the first nationally televised debates in presidential campaign history. And because of television, for the first time 70 million voters were given the opportunity to not only hear the candidates, but to visually compare them as well.

Surprisingly, opinion polls revealed a sharp contrast between the voters who had actually watched the debates on TV versus those who had merely listened to them on the radio. While radio listeners clearly thought that Nixon had won the first debate, television viewers were captivated by Kennedy’s smile, charm and overall appearance.

Television underscored the significance of nonverbal communication. As we’ve studied more and more how people communicate with each other, we see that communication is lot more than just talk. We’ve discovered that we “talk” with our body that we “listen” with our eyes. We are not always conscious of this fact, but we are doing this all the time.

Martin Smith, the lead singer of Delirious?, will be leading worship at Vineyard Columbus this weekend. So if you are in town, come and worship with us.

A song called "Obsession" from their Cutting Edge (1 and 2) album which came out in the late 90's is one of my favorite songs. Here are the lyrics:

Obsession
What can I do with my obsession?
With the things I cannot see
Is there madness in my being?
Is it wind that blows the trees?
Sometimes you're further than the moon
Sometimes you're closer than my skin
And you surround me like a winter fog
You've come and burned me with a kiss

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns

And I'm so filthy with my sin
I carry pride like a disease
You know I'm stubborn God and I'm longing
to be close
You burn me deeper than I know
I feel lonely without hope
I feel desperate without vision
You wrap around me like a winter coat
You come and free me like a bird

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns for you