Today's timeline:
6:00 AM Wake up - get everyone ready for church
7:45 AM Leave for church
8:00 AM Set up room for the Breakfast Club
8:30 AM Teach the Breakfast Club
9:30 AM Go downstairs and set up computer for Adult Class
9:45 AM Adult SS Class
10:30 AM Take 'puter back upstairs and set up for the Upper Room
11:00 AM Sit in service briefly - just barely made it for communion!
11:20 AM The Upper Room - worship and a short lesson and the Gibberish Powerpoint game.
12:15 PM Tear down stuff from upstairs, take 'puter back to office
12:30 PM Fellowship ministry lunch and meeting
3:00 PM Went home and slept
Evening - watched the History Channel with the boys (Superpower secret aircraft - very cool)
Midnight - start working on this silly blog that no one but me reads!
Each Sunday can be very busy and tiring doing Children's Ministry. Today I began my second Sunday doing children's church during the 2nd worship service. I put my computer on a cart and set it up for the adult auditorium class, then took it upstairs to do "The Upper Room" - our children's church.
I have been struggling with the idea of Children's church in general - are we just pandering to people who don't want to teach their children to sit with them through the sermon? Or is it a great opportunity to help them to focus on God in a way that is appropriate for their age? I thought I knew the answer to that, but today they seemed to listen fairly well.
I used Easy Worship again - I am going to try the trial version of Media Shout this week and get it figured out if it kills me.
My lesson this morning to the Breakfast Club (1st service kids) and to my adult Class was this:
(If you want the entire lesson I will be glad to email it to you!)
Lessons from the End of the Spear:
1. God's purpose and plan is not all about my personal comfort/convenience.
God uses our pain and suffering for his glory. When those 5 missionaries were speared to death, they could not have known the impact they would have - how the gospel would be spread and the glory of God would grow because of their deaths. Acts 8 says that the first missionaries were scattered out from Jerusalem because of hardship and persecution. We need to learn here in the US that we do not hold God on a leash - he is sovereign and he does what he wants when he wants for his own purposes.
2. The power of the Gospel to transform lives and cultures.
The good news of Christ death on the cross for our sins had such a powerful impact on the Waodoni indians that had speared those missionaries to death. When they learned how Jesus had taken the spear for us, it radically changed their culture. They stopped killing each other and started helping each other. Interesting that our own culture has gone further away from the Gospel, and we have a culture of death and murder.
3. Our conviction in the reality of heaven and hell will fuel our passion for missions and evangelism.
This movie forces us to ask, "what do we really believe?" The Waodoni have one word that translates "hearing" and "application." In other words, they don't see a difference between hearing words and acting on those words. For them, application, or active obedience is the essence of faith. James 2 says the same thing. If we really believe in the gospel, that should be the active ingredient or fuel for our own efforts towards evangelism. This movie also makes me wonder why Christianity is in such a sorry state. Is it perhaps because millions of people who say they believe in Christ and in his salvation really don't believe? The evidence, or lack of evidence, sure seems to point to that conclusion.
I recently teased one of our church deacons who is in charge of an "involvement" day where we try to get more people at the church to be involved with the ministry of the church actively. I told him that we ought to call it, "Git off yer butt Sunday."
Probably wouldn't fly well with most of the congregation, but it packs a punch! After seeing the End of the Spear and doing this lesson, I thought that maybe we should call our "involvement" Sunday something like, "Active Faith Sunday."
Nah, I like "Git off Yer Butt" much better.
jc
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