Tag: Ministry

Morning Musing: Exodus 31:1-11

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“The Lord also spoke to Moses: ‘Look, I have appointed by name Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with God’s Spirit, with wisdom, understanding, and ability in every craft to design artistic works in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut gemstones for mounting, and to carve wood for work in every craft. I have also selected Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to be with him. I have put wisdom in the heart of every skilled artisan in order to make all that I have commanded you: the tent of meeting, the ark of the testimony, the mercy seat that is on top of it, and all the other furnishings of the tent – the table with its utensils, the pure gold lampstand with all its utensils, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offerings with all its utensils, the basin with its stand – the specially woven garments, both the holy garments for the priest Asson and the garments for his sons to serve as priests, the anointing oil, and the fragrant incense for the sanctuary. They must make them according to all that I have commanded you.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever known someone who was an idea person? Whenever something needed to be done, she had an idea for how to do it. Even if nothing needed to be done, she still had ideas. Let’s do this. Let’s try that. These kinds of folks can be inspiring. They can often easily wrap the people around them up in a really compelling vision of a future filled with all kinds of ideas. Having an idea and actually bringing that idea into reality, though, are two very different things. As we start in on the final chapter of the description of the tabernacle (before pretty much the whole thing will get repeated as the ISraelites actually build all of it…we won’t treat the sequel with quite as much depth or detail as we have given this part), we are going to start with a look at the folks who were actually going to make all of the ideas for the tabernacle happen. Check this out with me.

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Digging in Deeper: 2 Timothy 4:3-5

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“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (CSB –Read the chapter)

Here are some reflections this morning in light of the current teaching series we are working through at my church on Sunday mornings. I did not preach yesterday as we were out of town for the weekend. My Minister of Students filled the pulpit for me and did a terrific job tackling the tough subject of the personhood of the Holy Spirit. It really is a freeing thing being able to leave town knowing things are in good hands while I’m gone. Thinking about this series, though, what prompted the whole thing was a series of wrong answers given by people identified as evangelical Christians to very basic questions of Christian theology. How is it that so many Jesus followers could get such basic things wrong about their religious worldview? With some words from Paul to Timothy as our guide, let’s explore this together today.

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Digging in Deeper: Mark 14:3

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“While he was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured it on his head.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

At various times in the church’s history, there have been certain places the current culture of the church expected believers not to go. For a long time in our fairly recent past, one of those places were bars. It was simply understood that Christians in good standing didn’t go into bars. Those were places of sin and you didn’t want to be associated with that. Of course, cultural expectations and personal behaviors are two different things. And, when desired behaviors and cultural expectations aren’t in sync for some reason, the result is often a twisted mess of hypocrisy and deception. That’s a sermon for another time. Starting as early as the 1970s and accelerating from there, some young believers began to have entirely different attitudes as to what was and wasn’t appropriate for followers of Jesus to do. Alcohol gradually became one of the things they were okay with where their parents and grandparents were not. One of the consequences of this was that they began to see places like bars as fair game for ministry. Some even went so far as to plant churches in them. Well, plunking the Gospel down in a place most folks don’t expect to find it can lead to some interesting, but powerful, ministry encounters. That’s what we see here as we continue in Mark’s story about Jesus’ life.

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Knocking Down Walls

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We’ve finally reached the end of this journey. We’ve seen the church rise up, thrive through adversity, stand firm in the face of some pretty intense internal challenges, and finally hit its stride here in the most exciting story of all with a church business meeting. Wait…a church business meeting? How could that be exciting? Because this one would set the tone for how the church working well would approach ministry for the rest of its history. You’ve never seen such an exciting business meeting before. Read on to find out what happened and what it means for us.

Knocking Down Walls

Have you ever seen the gameshow Wipeout? It is a favorite in our household. If you’ve never seen it, the basic premise is that a group of pretty average folks are invited to take part in an insane series of obstacle courses. Each course is designed for the contestants to fail and in increasingly embarrassing ways. The bigger the wipeouts, the better the laughs. 

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Morning Musing: Mark 1:28

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“At once the news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity of Galilee.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Some people are attention hounds. They’ll do whatever they can to get people to pay attention to them. Sometimes the antics are positive and funny, sometimes they’re more unsavory, but attention is the goal. Social media has allowed for the creation of more of these folks than have ever existed in the past. There are people whose entire lives are spent finding new ways to get people to notice them. Jesus wasn’t like that at all, but He got it all the same.

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