From The Book of Common Prayer:
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for the day is far spent and the evening is at hand; be our companion in the way. Enkindle our hearts and awaken hope, that we may know Thee as Thou art revealed in the Scriptures, and in the Breaking of the Bread. Grant this for the sake of Thy love. Amen.
The people at Pyromaniacs recently published a set of spoof posters titled, Emergent-See Po-Motivational Posters for Emerging Christians: the All-New Motivational Posters for the Emerging Church Conversation Chaos. When I first heard about them I thought, “Oh, these are gonna be good.” So I started reading—I laughed; I chuckled; I became quiet; my heart began sinking; I wept.
While aimed squarely at the emergent church movement, there is really nothing “all-new” about the lies being lampooned here. It has been said that good satire always contains an element of truth, one of which is that the stuff that is satirized in these “motivational” posters is the stuff of ministry—yes, even ministry in the church. I have conversations with the folks in the posters on a regular basis (and you can put my picture in the one above, too). The deceits of the devil are indeed subtle and pervasive—and fatal.
For the second year in a row, Rob (lifeon8thstreet.com) was the winner of Transformatum’s 2008 NCAA men’s basketball pool. As the only entrant who picked Kansas to win it all, Rob receives a pound of House Blend whole bean coffee from Intelligentsia Coffee.
Forget the sin gene search, we need brain stem lobotomies (a.k.a., reptilian brain).
We have a rotation among our church’s Session to fill the pulpit whenever there is a fifth Sunday in a month (though it gets moved around sometimes for the sake of convenience). Until recently, it worked out to about once a year for each of us (now that we have added two more elders the gap will be longer). Before yesterday, the last time I was up was on December, 31 2006. I was next scheduled to preach back in January of this year, but circumstances delayed the event until yesterday … with the only difference being 1) it was not a fifth Sunday, and 2) the passage was assigned.
Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties (a hardware driver issue in XP). Hopefully I will have an audio version for you next time.
Sermon Date: 04/20/2008
Sermon Passage: Matthew 6:16-24
Sermon Title: Life Coram Deo