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Forward Look

Seder, what is it?

On the Thursday of Holy week, April 1, this year, at 7 p.m., we at Community Wesleyan will be sharing in a Christian version of the Jewish Seder.   Several have asked me what it is. 

Q.  What is a Seder?

A.  Seder means order.   The order being referred to is the order of the events at the Passover meal in Jewish households.   The meal was not simply a big family dinner.  Rather it was a highly symbolic meal completely structured for the purpose of teaching about and at the same time commemorating the Exodus.  

Q.  Why are we as Christians interested in a traditional Jewish dinner? 

A.  The reason is quite simple.    This Jewish celebration is millennia old.  God gave them instructions to begin celebrating it when they left Egypt (Ex. 12:14).    The reason we are so interested in it is that this was the commemorative meal that Jesus was leading when he instituted what we call communion or the Lord’s Supper.

Q.  What happens at a Christian Seder? 

A.   Our overall object will be to enrich our understanding of what Jesus was teaching at the Last Supper by understanding better how the sacrament of Communion is connected with the important parts of the Jewish meal during which Jesus instituted it.  For example, the Jewish Seder involves four cups of wine (we will use grape juice) at different times in the meal.  Each one symbolized a verb in God’s promise of redemption to the Jewish people (Ex. 6:6,7).   In between, are ceremonial foods also associated with the Jewish Exodus from Egypt.   The whole experience recalled that formative event in Jewish history.   However, it also very much symbolized the change that had taken place on that night, a change from slavery to freedom.    It also included elements that looked forward.   I’m sure you can see already several potential connections with what Jesus has done for us.

Q.  Will we be taking communion as a part of this service?

A.  Yes, we will.   It is a unique experience to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in the Seder setting in which it was originally instituted.  That is also why it is held on Thursday of Holy Week, traditionally the day on which we believe Jesus held the Last Supper.

 Q.  Will this be good for children to attend?

A.  Yes, I believe it will, especially children in grades 3-6 who I think will benefit greatly.  In fact, children will be asked to participate in some special ways.   Children may also taste the various ceremonial foods if their parents approve.   If they have accepted Christ for themselves, have a basic understanding of the sacrament, and if their parents approve they may partake of communion as well.

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Forward Look

50th Anniversary Committee filling subcommittees

At their meeting Tuesday evening, the 50th Anniversary committee continued to lay the groundwork for our church’s 50th anniversary celebration.   They also celebrated completion of recent   50 4 50 ministries; such as Eric’s and Magda’s missions trip and the Children’s Great Adventure weekend.   

One of the key things currently happening is filling sub-committees.  All committees are looking for interested volunteers who have the 50th on their hearts and would like to work to help our church’s celebration be meaningful.   The six sub committees are

50th Anniversary Teams
Team Area Team Leader(s)
Promotional JoAnne Jones
History Lori Hodge
50  4  50 Ministries Pastor Eric Paashaus
Prayer Larry Nemitz
Celebration Events Mike and Pat Lamb
Funds Planning (not yet named)

 If you would like to volunteer for any of these teams, please contact the team leader or Pastor Kelvin Jones.   The more folks who are involved, the greater the celebration!

The 50th committee also is working on ideas to increase calendar coordination in our church, something we feel will be needed for a successful celebration.  If you have ideas for this or would be interested in helping with it, please talk to Pastor Kelvin.

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Forward Look

The Forward Look

 I’m starting a new category today called ‘The Forward Look,’ a subcategory of Church Notes.  Often people ask me what kinds of things are happening in various committees at church.   Sometimes I am looking for additional ways to get info on advance plans out.   I find at times people tell me they would like to feel they are on the inside track.   In fact, I considered calling this category ‘inside track’ but felt it sounded too elitist.   I want it to be informative, not exclusive.   People who sign up for this feed can get the advance news about plans in progress without being distracted by other posts.   This new title also reminds us that as we celebrate all that God has done in the last 50 years, it is crucial that we look ahead and plan for the future under the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  I hope readers find this category helpful.

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Church Leadership

An increasingly key component of preparation

I guess I never really thought about it enough.  Why do doctor’s offices all call you ahead of appointments to confirm?   Yes, I have forgotten a few, but very few.   I run a pretty good calendar and don’t mess up very often.  I guess I just think since I’m a responsible adult, why check up on me?    But it must be that it pays them to do so in increased appointment-keeping by patients.

This last week was our monthly High PEAKS leadership training night.   Attendance has been very low the last couple months.   So JoAnne encouraged me to take two additional steps besides the traditional bulletin reminder to promote attendance; send out the reminder email further ahead with a response request this time, and make some last minute follow-up calls to those I had not heard from.  I took her advice.  Surprise!   I estimate that the combination of added preparation for attendance doubled the number at High PEAKS last Thursday evening, despite the fact that several regulars were away.   I’ve always thought; all my leaders know this is a monthly event, why remind them?    But apparently it pays big dividends to do so.

This made me think about all of our habits of preparation as church leaders.    I know, for example, that for Sunday morning, I spend nearly all my preparation time either preparing my content, preparing my delivery, or preparing my heart, but I don’t think about specifically helping to draw in the congregation.   I just assume; they know it’s Sunday; they will want to come to worship.   I think Bible study leaders and children’s Sunday school teachers do the same.   But now I’m seriously wondering if we are not missing something that is much needed today.   What would happen if every week, I explicitly spend a portion of my preparation time working to directly encourage attendance?   Now that I think of it, I recall having done that for some special events in the past and seen results.   How could I do some of that each week?   

I believe the need for this is increasing because of the ever increasing level of busyness and distraction that we all live with.   We have so many choices that we need that personal touch to be influenced to focus even on one that we know is so important.   This is a twenty-first century way that we can “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24 NIV).

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Church Leadership Journal

Leadership sub-category created

I’ve some key adjustments to my blog that I hope are helpful to my readers.  

1.  Now that I’m a little more familiar with this environment and on the advice of folks at our annual board retreat, I’m opening up new posts and pages for comments.  I have received some feedback by email and I am looking forward to more interaction. 

2. I am adding a new nested category, called church leadership under church notes for posts that are especially relevant to that topic.  

Leadership is an area that I have studied and read after extensively in the last decade.  As a young pastor I did not understand its importance.   Bible college and seminary education was then and is still woefully inadequate in this area. 

But now as a seasoned pastor,  I realize that leadership is central to how a pastor encourages others in ministry (Eph. 4:11,12) and accomplishes more than he or she can accomplish alone.    Through this new category on my blog I hope to help younger pastors and lay leadership avoid my earlier error and find helpful insights.   I will also seek to review some of the best books I have read in my book review pages as well.

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Church Leadership

“Use the health you have” and churches

At High PEAKS this past Thursday, we interacted with a Leadership Summit DVD.  One point the speaker, former football star Mike Singletary, was making was that one of the dangers to maintaining and protecting high impact teams was comparing ourselves with others.   Most often when we do that, he warned us, it leads to complaining and grumbling about what we don’t have.   That is not a productive stance.  As our group discussed this issue, we remembered that the Bible warns us against this pitfall (2 Cor. 10:12; Lu. 18:11). 

Our LBA vice-chairman also invited us to integrate this warning with the inspirational story I had blogged about recently containing that key phrase, “Use the health you have.”    He suggested to us that this piece of advice from a young Mom struggling with health issues would also serve as a tremendous key thought to help us as a church counteract the tendency to compare and complain.    When our internal conversation is something like, “Don’t be thinking about what you don’t have; rather, use well what God has already given you,” we will be far better off.   We will have a more positive focus and we will find work that we can do within our reach.   It will help us use our own gifts rather than envying the gifts of others.  It was an inspired connection.

Sometimes too, we get so focused on trying to fix the problems –there are always problems–that they distract us from using our strengths.  But if our mind maintains emphasis on taking the best advantage of what is working, we will often make more progress.  

What great church leadership advice!   “Use the health you have!”

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Journal

Difficult Passages Series — John 14:6 for March 17, 2010

1.     Why is this passage listed among difficult passages?

The difficulty in this verse has always been the exclusiveness of it.   While this is culturally troubling in our era when tolerance for various religions is popular, we also need to ask what Jesus who also said, “we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22) could have meant for people who followed God in the Old Testament, for example.  

2.     How do we deal with the difficulties in this passage?

            Remember that the NT context was even more polytheistic than ours.

We need to remember that this was spoken into a much more polytheistic world than ours.  Greeks and Romans had pantheons of gods and goddesses.  Yet NT preachers like Peter and Paul uncompromisingly preached the uniqueness of Christ.   According to Acts 2:31-33,36 the uniqueness of Christ is established by the resurrection, exaltation and then by Pentecost itself.  According to more of Peter’s early preaching, Jesus was the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy concerning a prophet to come (3:22,23).   One purpose was to “give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel” (5:31).   In a Gentile’s house, Peter declared that Jesus had been appointed by God as “judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). 

            The Larger issues

It is important to examine the contextual question that Jesus is answering.  Thomas has just asked where Jesus is going and implied that he would like to know the way to that place but does not know (v. 5).  Jesus had been speaking of the heavenly place he was going to prepare a place where his followers would join him and his Father (vv. 1-3).   If Jesus had merely answered that he was the way, perhaps we could have considered narrowly confining the discussion to Christ’s followers, trying to ignore universal applications of this saying.   But Jesus also included two other words in his answer both of which have very universal implications in the gospel of John.    Jesus added that he was also the ‘truth,’ a term found 21 times in John beginning with John 1:14,17; and ‘life’ which is found 39 times in John beginning with John 1:4 but especially crucial in John 5:21-29. 

These two words and related passages bring up larger issues.  This is not just about Christianity as a religious system; it concerns the wider truth about who God has appointed. 

Da 7:13-14

“Before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away.”  NIV

Jn 5:25-27  “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.”  NIV

These two passages reveal to us that Jesus has been appointed by the Father to unique heavenly roles and authority that transcend earth and time.   In the light of these, Jesus’ statement in John 14:6 is simply a graciously revealed mundane corollary of these critical extraterrestrial truths.  The idea of Christ having been appointed is behind Paul’s thinking in Acts 17:30,31.  Jesus referred to his appointment himself in John 17:2 as he prayed, “You granted him authority over all people.”

Crucial to this overall passage is Jesus’ admonition “believe also in me” (Jn.  14:1 ESV).  

            What about people who lived before Jesus?

There are several interesting passages in the Bible that help us with regard to how Jesus might possibly be “the way” for people who lived before him.  

Heb 11:40

God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. KJV

The culmination of the argument of Heb. 7-9 is in Heb 9:15.  “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance — now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” NIV

From these verses, we can conclude that in some way, Jesus’ sacrifice made earlier sacrifices truly effective in a way they could not have been without his work.  Thus he was “the way” for Jews who followed faithfully before him even though they only looked forward to him (Heb. 11:40). 

More mysterious but also helpful is 1 Peter 3:18-20.   “He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 19 through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison 20 who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.” NIV

We don’t claim to fully understand this one.   In fact, it usually raises as many questions as it answers.   But at the least, it gives us a hint that Jesus may be “the way” for some who lived before him in ways that we do not understand.

This passages do not do away with all our questions, but they give us indications that God as thought of these issues ahead of us and dealt with them too.  And someday, we will know the whole story. 

In addition, there is a relevant principle that can be developed from Scripture that judgment is proportional to light.  But that is beyond the scope of this study.

If one is interested in the more academic theological issues of pluralism and inclusivism, I found online, a paper written by a student, Matt Blackmon, for a course at Dallas Theological Seminary that I thought was very helpful in summarizing some of the theological issues.    http://mattblackmon.org/pyne/truth.pdf

3.     What are the key truths or inspirational messages of this passage?

 

It is very important not to let our concerns about how to apply these words to those who have not heard Jesus’ words interfere with their main intention which is to assure and instruct those who have heard him.   In these verses Jesus’ main intention is to reveal incredibly good news to every one of his disciples.

  1. Jesus is preparing a place for us to go when we die that is with him and our heavenly Father.   His leaving the earth for a time involves a time of preparation for his later return for them.
  2. Jesus is going to return to take us to be with him (14:3).   Whether he is referring to his coming to gather the elect (Matt. 24:31) or his escorting of individuals when they die, he does not exactly specify.   The point is he is going to personally be involved in making our reunion with him happen.
  3. We can trust him and our heavenly Father about this otherwise very fearful issue.  Hebrews says,  “He too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb 2:14,15 NIV).
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Journal

Muslim persecution of Christians hits home

I was aware of a strange mix of emotions as I read the news story (http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100309/christians-expelled-forced-to-abandon-33-foster-kids-in-morocco/index.html ) about the Christian couple forced from their Moroccan orphanage at Ain Leuh in the middle of the night for interrogation and then forcibly expelled from Morocco while their 33 orphans grieved.   Outrage, sadness, and cynicism about Islam all churned in my heart. 

My wife and I lived in Morocco for three years while I was stationed at the naval communications center that used to be there.   We had visited that orphanage ourselves back in the early 1970’s and met the founders, two single women who had dedicated their lives to caring for abandoned children.   I remember the pleasant spot on the hillside up in the Middle Atlas region where the rambling house sat.  As I recall, it was surrounded by fruit trees and gardens, for the ladies taught the children how to preserve foods while they canned much of what the family ate.  They had come before WWII and had been there ever since.   I do not know if Village of Hope uses the same compound, but the article mentions the founders that I met.

Now, after the orphanage has been helping children for about seventy years, some fanatic government official comes along and turns the foster parents out, suddenly orphaning the children for a second time in their young lives.  How thoughtless and heartless can one be?   There is certainly not even a hint of a golden rule in that man’s mind—fundamentalist ideology perhaps—but no true alms-giving or charity.

For the children, I pray words from the OT where the God of Abraham warns those who persecute the fatherless.  He says that their defender is strong and He will fight for them (Pr. 23:10,11)!   For the foster parents, I pray from Matthew 5:10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

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Forward Look

Lenten/Easter Sermon Series started

Those who study words tell us that the word Lent derives from an Old English word for spring.  But when we hear the word today, our first thought is about the season of spiritual preparation that precedes Easter in the Christian calendar.   It is a time to help us remember the events of the last weeks of Jesus’ life leading up to and including his crucifixion and resurrection.  

Traditionally, the season begins on Ash Wednesday which was Feb. 17.   However, being in a somewhat freer church tradition, I sometimes wait a week or so to get started with the corresponding sermon series as it allows a little more time for a longer sermon series in February.   This year’s Lenten/Easter sermon series will help us dig into the meanng of those events of Jesus’ last days.  It is called, “Finding Strength and Hope in Jesus’ Story” began March 7.   All messages are for both the 9 and 10:30M a.m. services except for Easter.    On that day, Apr. 4, note the special times and two different messages. 

Date Message Text
7 Mar An Unnerving Perspective From Jesus Mark 8:31-38
14 Mar An Unexpected Parable John 13:1-17
21 Mar An Unselfish Prayer John 17
28 Mar Unbelieving Betrayals  
4 Apr.  8 am Unparalleled News John 20:1-8
4 Apr.  10 am Unleashed Celebration Matt. 28:1-15
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Journal Who Am I

A flower show lifts the spirits

The smell of spring, the inspiration of beautiful landscaping, the lure of finding just the plant you are looking for in your own project; all these combine to make CNY Blooms a nearly irresistable stop for me in March.  I am an amateur flower gardener from way back.  I inherited it from my maternal grandmother who grew so many flowers, that her displays sometimes stopped traffic. 

Anyway, just when we all need a reminder that spring is coming, the landscapers and nurserymen pull out all the stops, forcing plants into peak bloom that you find hard to persuade to bloom at all in your garden. The old brush-painted smoking flower-power VW bus was parked in the biggest bed of multi-hued flowers.  I especially admired the weeping cherry in full bloom, the copper-cup rain cascade, and the well-integrated mixing of vegetable raised beds and flower beds in one professional garden. Of course, I found a few plants to buy too;  an African violet for my collection, two ivies for my indoor gardening and a promising heuchera (Coral Bells) from my friends, Chuck and Cindy Centner.   It’s one of my favorite ways to move the season ahead for a few very pleasant hours.