The Pulpiteer

This is the third week of the series “Living as Church” where we will look at each step of our discipleship process as we work our way through Ephesians. This week we looked at the 3rd step which is “Loving Others” and that is our small groups.  There are a couple of aspects to small groups, including learning, study, and community.  This sermon focused more on the community aspect of small groups and striving towards health in our community.

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I thought I’d do a post that deals with some of the issues that are behind preaching. In other words, what sort of things do I consider when writing and shaping a sermon? This particular message is a good opportunity to do that because of some kind of unique aspects to it.
First, as I engage the text I am asking questions about what it is saying, how is it shaping me, and what is the purpose of the text. My goal most of the time is to “do” the text in the sermon. This way the sermon is experiential. If it is a story, then the message is shaped by that quality. If it is a letter that lays out some doctrine, then we do that. It’s not always perfect, but by focusing in this way I am challenged to go where the scripture takes me, not where I want to take the scripture.
With this section of Ephesians there are a few things going on. First off, we must recognize that this is just a part of a letter. That means we are picking up somewhere in the middle of a conversation or an argument (by that I don’t mean disagreement, but rather a rhetorical message). Chapter 2 in Ephesians plays an important part in the letter (or sermon depending on what you think the original genre of the book is). In the first 3 chapters, I believe, Paul is providing the foundation and motivation for the application of Christian living found in the rest of the book. In Chapter 2 he specifically focuses on God taking these gentile believers from the outside to inside the family of God; from death to life. It is full of “used to be’s.” The purpose of this is to bring to mind the fact that God has provided salvation and has indeed done wonderful things for the Ephesians, therefore they ought to live their lives accordingly. In the bigger picture of the book then, this is the causal part of the argument and the effect of a certain way of life comes a bit later. Continue Reading »

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This is the second week of the series “Living as Church” where we will look at each step of our discipleship process as we work our way through Ephesians. This week we looked at the 1st step which is “Loved by God” which emphasizes the fact that we are first loved by God and the rest of the process is a response to and living out of that reality.  The “Loved by God” step is our outreach and evangelism.

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This is the first week of the series “Living as Church” where we will look at each step of our discipleship process as we work our way through Ephesians.  This week we looked at the 4th step which is our ministry groups and we examined our calling to live out our faith in good works.  The book I cite in the sermon is called, As We Forgive.

Here’s a link to it:

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda
Price: USD 12.47

35 used & new available from USD 8.23

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This week we had a combined worship service with all three of our worship services meeting together in order to celebrate Pentecost, launch our new mission statement and church structure and to baptize 4 people.  The new mission statement is: Carson City UMC – disciples of Jesus Christ who are loved by God, loving God, loving others, and serving the world.  The goal is to get everyone involved in each stage of the discipleship process.  The scripture we used this week was the Pentecost story found in Acts 2.

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