A Life of Worship

Do you have a life of worship beyond Sunday morning? This YouTube mini-movie challenges the church to live a life of worship.

Nick Horny - How to be Good

Nick Horny in “How to be good” - has a description of a woman GP whose husband finds a faith through a guru, and she gets spiritually curious, and goes along to Sunday morning church… this is what she says:

I had never been to an ordinary church service before. I had been toweddings, funerals, christenings, Christmas, Carol services and even toharvest festivals. But I had never been to a bog standard, nobody thereSunday service. It all feels a long way from God. It feels sad, exhausted,defeated. This may have been God’s house once, the small bunch of peopleare told, but he’s clearly moved, shut up shop. And then you look around andwonder if the sadness isn’t part of the point. Those who drag themselveshere once a week are clearly not social churchgoers because there isnothing social happening here. This isn’t a place to see and be seen. Nothese people are the hard core. The beaten and the lonely and if there is aplace for them in the kingdom of heaven they deserve it. I just hope that itswarmer there than here, and there is more hope and youth, and there is noneed for bring and buy sales, and the choir of angels isn’t singingsomewhere else that day. Church of England heaven is in all probability aquarter full of unhappy old ladies selling misshaped rock cakes every day ofthe week for all eternity

Unison Trade Union Advert

I found reference to this in an article and tracked down the actual advert on YouTube. An incredibly cute advert - but conveys a real message (whether you agree or disagree with trade unions).

The perfect Church Service

The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

C. S. Lewis

Welcome To Our Church

Coals, Church and Christianity

D. L. Moody was visiting a prominent Chicago citizen when the idea of church membership and involvement came up.

"I believe I can be just as good a Christian outside the church as I can be inside it," the man said.

Moody said nothing. Instead, he moved to the fireplace, blazing against the winter outside, removed one burning coal, and placed it on the hearth.

The two men sat together and watched the ember die out.

"I see," the other man said.

Keith Long, Room to Grow (Hendrickson, 1999), quoted in Men of Integrity (3.2)

Someone Else

We are all saddened to learn this week of the death of one of our church's most valuable members, Someone Else. Someone's passing created a vacancy that will be difficult to be. Else has been with us for many years, and for every one of those years, Someone did far more than a normal person's share of the work. Whenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to for inspiration as well as results: Someone Else can work with that group." Whenever there was a job to do, a class to teach, or a meeting to attend, one name was on everyone's list- Someone Else. "Let Someone Else do it" was a common refrain heard throughout the church. It was common knowledge that Someone Else was among the largest givers in the church. Whenever there was a financial need, everyone just assumed Someone Else would make up the difference. Someone Else was a wonderful person, sometimes appearing superhuman; but a person can only do so much. Were the truth known, everybody expected too much of Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone! We wonder what we are going to do. Someone Else left a wonderful example to follow, but who is going to follow it? Who is going to do the things Someone Else did? Remember-we can't depend on Someone Else anymore!

From email Illustration List

A Struggling Student

There was once a college student who was struggling in many areas of his life. He spent a great deal of his time feeling angry and frustrated. When he could stand it no longer, he went to the dim and seldom-used chapel on campus. He paced up and down the aisles, slapping the back of the empty pews. He yelled, he cried, and he raged at God.

"God you created the world ... what could you possibly have been thinking? Look at the problems people face. Look at the pain, suffering, and hunger. Look at the neglect, the waste, the abuse. Everywhere I look, I see messed-up people, hurting people, lonely people!"' The young man ranted and raved on and on.

Finally, exhausted, he sat in the front pew and looked hopelessly at the cross. Its tarnished surface reflected the dusty sunlight filtering in through the stained glass windows. "It's all such a mess! This world you created is nothing but a terrible mess! Why even I could make a world better than this one!"

And then the young man heard a voice in the silence of that dusty chapel that made his eyes open wide and his jaw drop.

`And that is exactly what I want you to do."'

Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks - Wayne Rice

The Meeting Place

The meeting place is the learning place for the market place

John Wimber

Snowflakes

If a snowflake lands on your face it melts very quickly, but hundreds/thousands of snowflakes will stop traffic.

J John - New Wine 1995

In His Steps

"It is the personal element that Christian discipleship needs to emphasize. ‘The gift without the giver is bare.' The Christianity that attempts to suffer by proxy is not the Christianity of Christ. Each individual Christian business man, citizen, needs to follow in His steps along the path of personal sacrifice to Him. There is not a different path to-day from that of Jesus' own times. It is the same path. The call of this dying century and of the new one soon to be, is a call for a new discipleship, a new following of Jesus, more like the early, simple, apostolic Christianity, when the disciples left all and literally followed the Master. Nothing but a discipleship of this kind can face the destructive selfishness of the age with any hope of overcoming it. There is a great quantity of nominal Christianity today. There is need of more of the real kind. We need revival of the Christianity of Christ. We have, unconsciously, lazily, selfishly, formally grown into a discipleship that Jesus himself would not acknowledge. He would say to many of us when we cry, ‘Lord, Lord,' ‘I never knew you!' Are we ready to take up the cross? Is it possible for this church to sing with exact truth,

‘Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee?'

If we can sing that truly, then we may claim discipleship.

Charles M Sheldon in "In His Steps - What Would Jesus Do" p237

How much you care

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

The Stradivarius

Antonio Stradivari has not been surpassed in the making of violins, even though he died in 1737.

In 17116 he built an instrument which became his favourite, and it never left him. When he died it passed into the hands of his sons Francesco and Paola. Then it was sold to Count Cozio di Salabue in 1775, and valued at about £100.

In 1827 Luigi Tarisio, the famous collector, purchased it. But then it was not seen for decades.

It received the name ‘La Messie' (the Messiah) for those hearing the raptures of Tarisio became sceptical of there being such an instrument, as no one had ever set eyes upon it.

One morning in 1854, Luigi Tarisio was found dead. 246 exquisite violins were found in the place. Some were crammed in the attic. One - the best one - was found in the bottom drawer of an old rickety bureau.

When the greatest Stradivarius, ‘La Messie' was brought out and played, it had been cruelly silent for 147 years. But the silence still continues. In 1931 the instrument was purchased by WE. Hill and Sons for £2,000. In 1938 it was presented by them to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to be kept in perpetuity in a room especially prepared for it. Luigi Tarisio and other collectors have robbed the world of the sound of this violin.

Drive the point home p80

No Ex-Cuse Sunday

Recently, a church bulletin announced, The ‘no-excuse Sunday’! It read: “To make it possible for everyone to attend church next week we’re planning to have:
(1) beds, for those who say Sunday is their only day for sleeping-in
(2) eye-drops, for those whose eyes are tired from watching too much TV the night before
(3) steel helmets, for those who say the roof will fall in if they go to church
(4) blankets, for those who say the building is too cold and fans for those who say it’s too hot
(5) hearing aids, for those who say the pastor isn’t loud enough and ear plugs for those who say he shouts too much
(6) score cards, for those who like to count all the hypocrites
(7) relatives, for those who say Sunday is their only day to be with the family
(8) lunch, for those who say they can’t attend church and make dinner too
(9) trees and grass, for those who say they; “see God in nature” - especially golf courses!
(10) Christmas poinsettias and Easter lilies, for those who wouldn’t recognise the church without them.”

Going to church

“Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.”

Laurence J. Peter

The Treasures of the Church

The early church had a stormy relationship with the wicked and powerful Roman government. Cycles of severe persecution interrupted by tenuous peace recurred at the whim of the emperor. Roman officials, ignorant of the actual teachings and practices of true Christians, often acted out of bigotry, fear, superstition, or misinformation. The royal court assumed that the growing Christian church operated along the same lines as their own greedy religions.

The emperor, coveting the wealth these Christians must surely possess, summoned their head bishop to the royal court and ordered him to produce "the treasures of the church." The frustrated bishop protested that the church had no gold, jewels, or other valuables (which was indeed true at this point in history). The emperor, brushing aside the bishop's objection, demanded that the riches of the church be brought to him in the morning. The bishop left the royal presence quietly.

The next day the bishop dutifully appeared at the palace doorway. He was empty-handed. "I told you to bring me the treasures of the church!" the emperor raged.

The bishop then invited the emperor to look out at the palace steps. Gathered together, peering sheepishly at the great doors of the royal palace rising above them, was a mass of ragged beggars, cripples, slaves, and outcasts.

"These," said the bishop with a sweep of his arm, "are the treasures of the church."

For his unappreciated but accurate insight, the good bishop was promptly martyred. The treasure of the church is people. The church is not a building; it is not a doctrine; it is not a program. The body of Christ is the church.

Excuses

If you took the same excuses that people use for not going to church and apply them to other important areas of life you'd realize how inconsistent we can be in our logic. For example: Reasons Not To Wash

1. I was forced to as a child. 2. People who make soap are only after your money. 3. I wash on special occasions like Christmas and Easter. 4. People who wash are hypocrites-they think they are cleaner than everyone else. 5. There are so many different kinds of soap, I can't decide which one is best. 6. I used to wash, but it got boring so I stopped. 7. None of my friends wash. 8. The bathroom is never warm enough in the winter or cool enough in the summer. 9. I'll start washing when I get older and dirtier. 10. I can't spare the time

We Are Responsible for A Dead Church

Some years ago, a new pastor was called to a spiritually dead church in a small Oklahoma town. The pastor spent the first week calling on as many members as possible, inviting them to the first Sunday service. But the effort failed. In spite of many calls, not a single member showed up for worship! So the pastor placed a notice in the local paper stating that since the church was dead, the pastor was going to give it a decent, Christian burial. The funeral for the church would be held at 2 p.m. on the following Sunday.

Morbidly curious, the whole town turned out for the "funeral." In front of the pulpit, there was a large casket, smothered in flowers. After the eulogy was given, the pastor invited the congregation to come forward and pay their respects to the dead church. The long line of mourners filed by. Each one peered curiously into the open casket, and then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look. For inside the casket, tilted at just the right angle was a large mirror. Each one saw his own reflection in the mirror as perhaps never before!

That is still what happens when human beings allow the living Christ to confront them in their sinful brokenness. This special day calls us to make a choice to receive God's Christ, and to let our lives be made whole again by the power of God. As you begin this Holy Week, can you truly say in your heart, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!" The choice is up to you!

Robert A. Beringer, Turning Points, CSS Publishing Company, 1995.

Light the church

Several centuries ago in a mountain village in Europe, a wealthy nobleman wondered what legacy he should leave to his townspeople. He made a good decision. He decided to build them a church. No one was permitted to see the plans or the inside of the church until it was finished. At its grand opening, the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of the new church. Everything had been thought of and included. It was a masterpiece. But then someone said, "Wait a minute! Where are the lamps? It is really quite dark in here. How will the church be lighted?" The nobleman pointed to some brackets in the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, which they were to bring with them each time they came to worship. "Each time you are here'" the nobleman said, "the place where you are seated will be lighted. Each time you are not here, that place will be dark. This is to remind you that whenever you fail to come to church, some part of God's house will be dark"

From the Sermon Fodder Email List

Quecreek Miners Kept Each Other Alive

In what the news called "The Miracle at Quecreek," nine miners trapped for three days 240 feet underground in a water-filled mine shaft "decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group."

The 55 degree (Fahrenheit) water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so according to one news report "When one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned."

"Everybody had strong moments," miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital in Somerset. "But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That's the only way it could have been."

They faced incredibly hostile conditions together--and they all came out alive together.

What a picture of the body of Christ.

Quoted from Preaching Today Email list

Singer Boy George

Singer Boy George said, "On Sunday I attended the christening of my year-old godson Michael, and he was as restless as everyone else. The priest was a lovely man with impeccable dress sense, but I was confused from the moment he took the pulpit. Most of us only ever go to church for weddings and funerals, so sticking to the Book is pointless...and what's the point of rattling on about sin when most of us are doomed to eternal damnation? It doesn't warm people to Christianity, it only makes them feel like hypocrites. Worse still are the utterly depressing hymns. I'd like to see live music, acoustic guitars, and percussion. Church should be a joyous and liberating experience--[it] badly needs a facelift because it is God's theatre on earth, and he should be packing them in."

Boy George, London's Daily Mail, Feb. 23, 2000

Now go and do it

A congregation turned up one Sunday morning to find the church barred and bolted at the normal service time. On the door of the church was pinned a note in the Vicar's handwriting. It read "You have head about it long enough, now go and do it."

Mission

The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.

Emil Brunner

God Church & Mission

'The Church of God does not have a mission in the world' . . . it is more accurate to say that 'The God of mission has a church in the world'.

Tim Dearborn

We are the body of Christ

This Youtube video can be used either within a communion setting or when speaking about the CHurch as the Body of Christ.

Cruise Ship vs Battle Ship

A video from Igniter Media www.ignitermedia.com

How do you typically “church-shop?” Are you mostly interested in finding a church that accommodates your needs and gives you a comfortable experience? Or are you looking for a church that equips you to serve and deploys your gifts?

If We Are The Body

This is a Youtube video to the song If We Are The Body by Casting Crowns

The Body of Christ

This is a Youtube video based on 1 Corinthians 12