[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xu8lf7kUxMk]
Our little community church got some free advertising in the community at a recent Christmas parade in Lancaster CA. One of the neat things about the Antelope Valley is that there is a small town feel although the valley is supposed to grow to something like a half million folks by 2025. Thanks to Jeff for entering his 64 1/2 mustang as a participant in the parade.
This year was the second time in several years we’ve been able to host thanksgiving for our extended family. My memories of thanksgiving included an annual trip to the sizzler in Hollywood and an occasional Jack in the Box run. I don’t recall having extended family or friends over. What’s awesome is that we get to do this for our family now. I watched our six year old wait patiently for his extended family to arrive. “What time are grandpa and grandma coming over?” The house was clean as a whistle thanks to Mrs. Kasedoggy. Yours truly had the honor of cooking the “Bird.” The goal was 4pm and we began eating at 4:15pm. The turkey rocked, the potatoes were “wahe” cool, and the conversation around the table was casual. My two favorite side dish’s of the day??? My sausage apple stuff and the corn bread with “real corn” as one of the cousins commented, “what’s the deal with the corn in the corn bread?” It’s now post-turkey day and the turkey noodle soup is done and I’ve had two bowls. Yummy stuff. We even did a little Christmas shopping. This year I am thankful for family, my wife, and our kiddoes. I am thankful for my extended family too. I pray for my brother Scott. Now its time to get ready for Advent. As our youngest waited for grandma and grandpa we now wait for the king of kings. We prepare and wait for hope to come and renew us to right relationship with God. And together we pray, “come Jesus come.”
(Welcome to my friends from church)
The month of November we will focus on a theme of thanksgiving in our worship services (8am & 10:30am). Our sermon series for the month of November in church will cover four themes; giving thanks for each other, giving thanks for our enemies, giving thanks when times are hard, and giving thanks for the world. Our scriptural theme for the month of November will be from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you, who belong to Christ Jesus, to live.” (The Message Paraphrase)
The word thanks means to be actively giving thanks or to express gratitude towards something or someone. In our case as followers of Jesus we express gratitude to God for all that he does for us as his children. Being thankful is sometimes not easy to do. Especially when the world around us seems to be crumbling every time we turn on the news or read the morning headlines of another problem burdening the world.
How does one give thanks appropriately to God? I appreciate Eugene Peterson’ paraphrase from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. “Be cheerful no matter what, pray all the time, and thank God no matter what happens.” Paul gives us three things to do that I know for myself are sometimes difficult to live out.
There is a song we sing in worship by Matt Redman called “Blessed be your name,” that is applicable to us especially when we feel like not giving thanks to God when times are tough. May these words be our prayer as we learn to truly give thanks to God with a grateful heart.
Every blessing You pour out , I’ll turn back to praise, When the darkness closes in, Lord still I will say; Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your name, Blessed be the name of the Lord Blessed be Your glorious name.
Giving thanks for you!
Pastor K.C.
In church in the morning we celebrate the sacrament of baptism. It’s our first baptisms in the church since we’ve begun our relationship as pastor and congregation. What a joy and an honor to participate in kingdom work.
Found a bit of humor for the occasion…
A mother looked out a window and saw Johnny playing church with their three kittens. He had them lined up and was preaching to them. The mother turned around to do some work, but soon she heard meowing and scratching on the door.
She went to the window and saw Johnny baptizing the kittens. She opened the window and said, “Johnny, stop that! You’ll drown those kittens.”
Johnny looked at her and said with much conviction in his voice: “They should have thought of that before they joined my church.” (from Mikey’s Funnies)
Survived the first week of an online experience at fuller for the doctor of ministry program. This online experience is very unique. I’ve never participated in something like this in that as a class we interact through a chat board if you will. The papers I write are uploaded to a “drop box” and if I need to chat with the professors I send them an email through the message system set up in my “virtual” class room. The cool thing is that you can even track your grades for assignments. Very cool. In many ways its a global community of followers of Jesus trying to make a difference in the kingdom of God. This week our readings are from Nouwen’s, “In the Name of Jesus,” and Bonhoeffer’s, “Life Together.”
Community is vital to me. It has always been a desire of my heart to live amongst friends. When I was involved early on in my ministry as a youth worker and as a wannabe collegian I participated on two occasions in a community of friends who lived in community serving a local neighborhood near our church. It was one the most powerful experiences of what community should be as the church. It was an honor to serve Christ, but the honor came from being with friends who were like minded and who desired a more intimate relationship with the Lord. Bonhoeffer’s opening line in his book summarizes the importance of followers of Jesus living together as “friends”, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Ps. 133:1 In community I find restoration for the soul. Forgiveness and grace. In community I come broken ready for God to change me, and in community I find with friends a desire to go back into the world and into the neighborhoods around us with the same message we found together living in community. Hope. And the cool thing about my call to serve Christ as a pastor??? The church is my community of friends and we together represent to the world what it means to follow Jesus and we get to represent what the kingdom of God here on earth should be and should look like.
How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, p. 227).
One of the many things I find myself doing on a Sunday morning is watching for visitors. In a small church it’s really easy to notice when someone is new. I’ve noticed that the hardest part sometimes is getting from the front to the back quick enough to say hello right after the sermon.
What does grace look like when it grows up? It looks like a window you wash in your house and immediately after its cleaned for some reason the fingerprints of those you love reappear within minutes. What does someone look like when God does his work of grace in a persons life? It’s like the window covered with fingerprints instead the fingerprints belong to the maker of the universe.
Every person in my life was some kind of instrument of grace growing up in the church. I’m a follower of Jesus because of the people in my life who gave me grace. I’m a husband and deeply in love with my wife because of how I witnessed those I watched from afar in the way they loved their own wives. I’m a father because of the grace I watched shown to those who fathered their own children.
Covered in grace I am. Giver of grace God is and I now because of those who loved me like Jesus loved me; I now get to give the grace of God away to those I meet and greet in all that I say and do as a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor.
When grace grows up it’s kind of cool. I’d like to think that if it weren’t for grace I’d be in a whole different place in my life. If it weren’t for some work in therapy and God’s healing grace I can only imagine what life would be like right now at the ripe old age of 39. I am the other side of grace. What grace looks like when simmered under low heat for 39 years. (Okay sounds wierd, but in my head it makes sense)
We’ve been down into Hollywood on a couple of occasions of recent and everytime we drive through the city the sights, sounds, and the smells of the city I grew up in as a kid appear out of no where. Let me illustrate. We as a family recently attended a Dodger game a few weeks ago. Everytime we attend a memory of a game I attended with my dad as a kid always seems to appear. I remember it like yesterday. Dad filled to the rim with his favorite baseball drink, began raising his voice. We were with the YMCA on a field trip on this particular day to the Dodger game and those around us started to not only smell, but hear “father” and his loud voice dominate the stands. The next scene is dad being taken away by stadium police until the game was over. Although I don’t remember much of what happened after that game, I still remember sitting in the upper level seating watching the Astros and Dodgers play and everytime we go to a game that’s the first memory I think of from when I was a kid in growing up in the city and feeling like a heel over “father” and his lack of appreciation for his gifts of grace of kids in his life.
The kind of grace I continue to experience in my life is the kind of grace that heals the soul. The kind of grace that nudges you along in life and keeps your eyes focused on the one who is grace. If it weren’t for grace in my life I’d not be married to an awesome woman, blessed with wonderful kids, and overwhelmed with God’s blessing of being a pastor, called to give grace back. If it weren’t for grace in my life I’d not have the shelter and food that my parents once couldn’t provide for us as kids. The kind of grace that continues to be and has always been faithful in provision for my family today.
The question I ask myself today is this; “what happens when grace grows up?”
“When the message of the kingdom of God is separated from the name of Jesus two distortions follow, and these are in fact the source of deep divisions in the life of the church today. On one hand, there is the preaching of the name of Jesus simply as the one who brings a religious experience of personal salvation without involving one in costly actions at the points in public life where the power of Satan is contracting the rule of God and bringing men and women under the power of evil. Such preaching of cheap grace, of a supposed personal salvation that does not go the way of the cross, of an inward comfort without commitment to costly Action for the doing of God’s will in the world – this kind of evangelistic preaching is a distortion of the gospel. A preaching of personal salvation that does not lead the hearers to challenge the monstrous injustices of our society is not mission in Christ’s way. It is peddling cheap grace.
On the other hand, when the message of the kingdom is separated from the name of Jesus, the action of the church in respect of the evils in society becomes a mere ideological crusade”… pp9