Living Intentionally During the Super Bowl

Last year, our church held a community Super Bowl party as an outreach event.  Our goal was to be able to provide food and great accommodations to watch the game, while meeting new people and sharing the gospel with them (especially at half time with a DVD of an NFL player sharing his testimony).  We spent time setting up the projectors, tables, and chairs, and spent time and money on providing food and making it presentable to our guests.

The bottom line:  it was not the most successful effort.  It turned out to be a great opportunity of fellowship for people in our church, but it created no lasting connection with new friends who we would be able to minister to.  That has translated into our church not holding the same event this year for the Super Bowl.

So here is how I’m encouraging our people to live intentionally during the Super Bowl: hold a Super Bowl party in your house for your friends and neighbors, or attend a Super Bowl party that people you know are already planning.

The Super Bowl is an event in our country where people naturally gather together.  Instead of people in our church isolating ourselves with each other, let’s be part of the communities we already have some connection to.  Let’s get to know our neighbors or friends, building trust with them and allowing our faith in Christ to be seen through our actions and conversations.  Let’s take advantage of these natural opportunities to spend time with people who might not know Christ so that we can take one step further in making Him known!

By the way, Super Bowl XLV between the Steelers and Packers is Sunday, Feb. 6, with an estimated kick-off time of 6:25pm on FOX.

How School Teachers Can Live Intentionally for the Gospel of Christ

I recently shared notes on how to live intentionally to share the gospel of Jesus with those we are around.  I was asked recently to share some practical ways a teacher could live intentionally.

I jumped on this because I taught in a school for a year between ministry positions and I have seen some very effective ways that teachers can live out their faith around their peers and students.  It’s a tough environment for a teacher to live out her faith, but the difficulty should not scare Christian teachers into being silent.

Here are some practical suggestions for teachers to live intentionally:

1. Organize a weekly prayer group for other school staff.  Invite other teachers, custodians, principles, aides, etc., to come out once a week at a consistent time just to pray for each other, your students, and your school’s families.  I found this to be a way to encourage other Christian workers, and to share my faith with others by asking them how we can pray for them.  Most teachers will welcome prayer!  And some will be very curious over time if you continue to pray for them.

How To Live Intentionally (lots of practical tools)

For most Christians, maybe the greatest sin of omission is our failure to make disciples, teaching people to obey everything that Jesus commanded.

2 Cor. 5:17-20 reminds us that we represent Christ and are supposed to be sharing with people how they can be reconciled to God.  That’s what it means to live intentionally. The simple question is:  are we doing that?

I believe there is no better consistent way to see people come to Christ than through the personal investment we make in others—that everyday decision to share Christ with the people we have some type of relationship with.

How can I say that? Because I look at Jesus’ life. You might ask- what about those large group settings where Jesus preached to crowds?  Or what about those large revivals in our history?  Those are examples of an immediate large response from people to obedience in Christ. And you would be right—they were. Those large group responses have their place, and will continue to happen as the Lord wills.

No Monday Morning Rewind

There will be no Monday Morning Rewind today because Rev. Chas Carlisle preached yesterday.  Pastor Chas is the founding pastor of Living Stone Community Church in Shelby, OH, and is the leader behind the Jericho Journey, a vision to start 10 church in the next five years throughout communities near Shelby.  Coming to Central as part of our Live Intentionally focus, his challenge to us came from Jonah: we choose every day to go to Ninevah or Tarshish.  Meaning, we decide every day if we are going to make God known or flee from doing that, as Jonah tried to do.

It was a great message that was timely for our church, and you can listen to it on our online audio page.

Monday Morning Rewind: Engaging Our Culture with Truth (Acts 17:16-31)

What are Monday Morning Rewinds?  Click here to see my original post explaining them.

Yesterday’s sermon was the fifth sermon for our 2010 focus for the church: Live Intentionally.  This sermon dealt with the scripture text of Acts 17:16-31.  You can listen to this sermon here.

In yesterday’s sermon, I sought to answer this question:  how can we stand firmly on God’s Word in the midst of the ungodliness around us? With that, the question stands: How can we engage our culture with truth?

I gave some definitions of these words because when you start using these words, people wonder what you’re really talking about.  Engage means to occupy the efforts or attention; Culture is a very broad word that means the ways and makeup of a community- its people, customs, beliefs, possessions, activities, etc. Truth can be easily defined as Jesus did in John 14:6 by saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Truth is found in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.

So, in other words, this message was about how to occupy the attention of people in our community with Jesus Christ.

We started by looking at 2 Corinthians 5:20, a supporting text to our Live Intentionally focus:  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

No Monday Morning Rewind Today

There won’t be a Monday Morning Rewind today because I didn’t preach yesterday.  Instead, Central was blessed by the preaching of Dr. Jack Kwok from the SCBO.  Our worship time also welcomed Dwayne Lee from the SCBO leading music for us in a different way than we were used to.  It was a great blessing to have these two men with us.

Dr. Kwok’s sermon can be found on our sermon page.  It was an excellent message on the reality of heaven from 2 Corinthians 5.

The blessing of this worship time was the experience of truly being in the Lord’s presence and feeling his Spirit among us.  We saw a young lady come to rededicate her life Jesus and submit to Him as He puts the pieces of her life back together! We saw hearts drawn together in prayer as a response to the Scripture that was preached.

This is the time for our church to live intentionally.  My prayer is that the message and excitement from today goes outside of our building!