What are the advantages of preaching consecutively, chapter after chapter, all the way through a book of the Bible? There are five reasons…
The essence of Christmas is the mysterious, glorious and profound claim that God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. To this astounding truth one might be compelled to ask: did it have to be this way? Was there any other way for God to redeem us? The second chapter of Hebrews gives us three reasons why God had to become a man:
Next Saturday (April 19, not tomorrow) is Record Store Day. This annual celebration of independent record stores has been taking place since 2007, and gives special attention to the vinyl record, which happens to be the main reason independent records stores are still in business. As music consumption moves away from CDs and increasingly toward MP3 downloads or direct streaming, there has been a movement back toward buying records the old fashioned way. Vinyl sales have been on the increase for the last few years, and show no signs of slowing down.
As Christians, we believe we are the light of the world — not because we think we’re something special, or because we’re better than other people. It’s because this is what Jesus says is true of his people — in Mat. 5:14, he says to his disciples, “You are the light of the world.” Where Christians are, there is light. Where Christians are not, there is darkness.
As a pastor of a church that is getting close to opening a new sanctuary, I’ve had to do some thinking about whether a congregation should even seek to have its own building. Maybe that sounds like a silly question, because you’ve assumed that it is the goal of all churches to own their own facility. But that would not be true. Many churches, especially new church plants, do not have their own buildings, and some have no intention of getting one.
