Mary Did You Know

ihis is a wonderful song and I have included here two different versions from YouTube. One could be used in an all-age context with children present, the other is maybe for an adult audience.

Washed Clean Magic

I saw a video on the internet of something like this a couple of years ago and searched high a low for details of how to do it. I eventually worked it out with Iodine, spray starch and Sodium Thiosulphate.

But I have just come across this from one of my colleagues in the Portsmouth Diocese Fr Simon Rundell. Here are his instrcuctions:

Two bowls of water – one clean water and one filled with water 100-200mls of FILM FIXER. You can buy it at a photographic supplies shop – Jessops still have a few bottles at the back for those who still develop proper film: £9 for a litre which will last ages.

One white linen handkerchief, chopticks or tongs to handle them

One small bottle of Iodine Tincture from the Chemists/Dugstore (79p from Rowlands Pharmacy)

1. Add Iodine to clean water

2. Cloth in ‘dirty water’ so it becomes stained.

3. Transfer Iodine cloth into fixer solution -> the iodine is neutralised by the fixer and it goes back to white

4. Transfer cloth now soaked in fixer solution into bowl with iodine water in it, so that iodine is neutralised and both bowls appear clean

5. Dispose of carefully as the chemicals are poisonous.

There! You can dress up sin and redemption how your theology paints it (you can tell, I don’t do penal substitution) and you can explain it according to your audiences (Infant and Junior School Collective Worship love this!). Over to you all now – make the most of it!

i-Share Evangelism Video

The evangelism tool for our media generation. i-Share - The Gospel visualized on your screen or on your iPod and in multiple languages. i-Share is a new evangelism tool meant to help individuals, youth groups, mission trip participants and beyond share their faith in a new and relevant way. The i-Share video can be used in a public setting in your favorite presentation software or personally in your own video iPod or similar device. The i-Share also comes in more than one language!! By using the i-Share video mission trip participants are able to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ no matter the language barrier.

This version is on YouTube, however more information, full quality videos and versions in different languages can be found here.

Redemption Videos

A video that is just over 4 mins long that tells the story of the last days of Jesus life with words from the Gospels. It is available in full or as three separate parts.

Listed below in this order:
Revemption Video - Entire Video 4min 32sec
Part 1 - 2mins 8secs
Part 2 - 1min 20secs
Part 3 - 1min 14secs

The Cross

The statements from the cross, both by Christ, and by those around him hang in the air with striking sounds and surprise visuals of his last moments on Calvary's hill. This video could be used for evangelistic outreaches, communion services, studies on the cross or crucifixion, Good Friday services or an opener on Easter Day.

God Sent His Son

This is a video that connects Christmas with Easter. A great drawing that could be used as a conntdown before either a Christmas serive or Good Friday/Easter.

Bring It To The Cross

A video from Media Fuel (less expensive to purchase directly from them) that is shown from the Worship House Media site. Could be used in Holy Week, on Easter Day or at any time to focus on Christ's victory on the cross.

The Face of Christ

On YouTube a live drawing by artist Joe Castillo of Christ's face containing in the details his life story. Very Inspiring! It is incredible how he draws the events of Jesus' life and the result is a picture oftheFace of Christ.

Where do you stand?

Found this video on the www.churchfuel.com website and will think about using it on Good Friday or Easter Day. It is less expensive to buy it direct from the authors.

Christ paid the ultimate price to save us. In the light of this sacrifice we must ask ourselves the question: WHERE DO WE STAND?

He Chose The Nails

This devotional video comes from Max Lucado and lasts for just over 9mins. Suitable to use on Good Friday, or any other occasion when you focus on the benefits to us of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.

This has it's own website where there are versions to download: http://www.hechosethenails.net/

Psalm 22 - Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani,” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries these words out from the cross on the day we now remember as Good Friday. But what are these words? Where did they come from? Jesus’ students, his disciples, would have recognized them. They come from the Psalms, from Psalm 22. They would have recognized what he was saying, and what else he was saying.

Experience again these powerful words found in both the Old and New Testament. On Good Friday, or on Easter Morning, dive into the rest of the passage found in Psalm 22.

The first video is 4min 55sec. The second is a shorter version entitled Forsaken and is similar but shorter at 3min 18secs.

Stations

Hundreds of years ago, church pilgrims read God's Story in multi-colored, intricately designed windows. Now, the Church has a new window: the screen. The question is, how will we use it and whose story will we tell?

This video from Sacramentis uses paintings from Ghislaine Howard to draw us into the reality of the crucifixion.

The Cross of Christ

The cross of Jesus is the watershed event in all of human history. All are invited to come, gaze, and respond.

The Last Painting

The prophets foretold that the Messiah would suffer excruciating pain to save mankind. And the gospels confirm the final days that Jesus endured. While some look at these days and see tragedy, Christ sees completion. Painting by Mike Lewis. Music from The Passion of the Christ.

This is a video from IgniterMedia and is 3min 7 secs long. We have used it as part of our Good Friday devotions and it worked well.

What does love sound like?

Jesus proved to us what love really is. He went voluntarily, suffered rejection, pain and finally death on a torturous cross so that we could be reunited with God. He proved to us what love really is. This simple clip focuses on the sounds of love. One being the sounds of love between people and one being the sounds leading up to and during the crucifixion. This clip will work well around Easter time and anytime you want to focus on the price Christ paid in order to bring us salvation.

A video 3mins 1sec. We used this as part of our Good Friday refelctions.

3 Days Later

This powerful video takes a look at the death and resurrection of Christ as one of Jesus' disciples would have experienced it. It demonstrates how hopeless Jesus' death would have left them, and how amazing Jesus' resurrection would have been to them on the first Easter Morning. This video is a wonderful way to open your Easter Service, Sunrise Service, or a sermon about the power and hope found in Jesus' resurrection.

Movie 3min 10sec

Easter Drawing

This moving, reflective piece is great for Easter. Or use it any time to reflect on Jesus with this unique line drawing video.

I think this is brilliant and we may well use this next Easter Sunday.

Video 4min 16sec

Friday or Sunday

When He walked out of the tomb alive, Jesus was offering us something. The simple answer may surprise you. Take the journey of a lifetime.

Video 4min 10sec

The Elements of Easter

A devotional video that uses images and video with text to convey the meaning of Easter. 2min 15sec

The Tomb

We hang the cross on the walls of our homes, use it to decorate our churches and memorialize our fallen heroes, but the empty tomb seldom receives the same recognition. While the cross was the end of death, the empty tomb represents the beginning of life.

Video 1min 32sec

Did Jesus die on the cross?

I read about a person who wrote the following to a local newspaper advice columnist: Dear Uticus, Our preacher said on Easter that Jesus just swooned on the cross and that His disciples nursed Him back to health. What do you think? Sincerely, Bewildered.

The columnist replied, Dear Bewildered, Beat your preacher with a cat of nine tails with 39 heavy strokes, nail him to a cross, hang him in the sun for six hours, run a spear through his heart, embalm him, put him in an airless tomb for 36 hours, and see what happens. Sincerely, Uticus.

Sunday's Comin'

This is a video from Igniter Media www.ignitermedia.com

The story of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion is one of betrayal, brutality, despair, and pain. Yet we know even before His death that redemption was promised to be coming soon. We know that the story does not end at the cross. We know what many did not realize – that Sunday’s comin’.

Celebrating Easter means rejoicing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and recognizing what each of those events can teach us about the character of God. Be reminded of this truth during Easter: God has worked, is working, and will work through all things, even now as we find ourselves awaiting his return.

Children sermon idea

Children sermon idea, takes some prep time...

"When we visited our son in San Antonio I saw the eggs they sell on the streets. I believe it is a Mexican tradition. I forget what they are called. I had never seen it before. Maybe someone in the southwest knows what I'm talking about. The eggs are hollow and filled with confetti or glitter, etc. The idea is to break them over people for good like, I believe.

Here's what I did. The eggs are blown out (poke a small hole at the top and bottom of the raw egg and then blow through until all the contents squirt into a bowl.) Rinse them out and let them dry, then dye them or otherwise decorate them. Glue a small piece of tissue paper over one of the holes (the tissue becomes fairly transparent and isn't really noticeable) and fill the egg (through the other hole) with glitter or confetti or anything else like that. Then glue the other opening with tissue paper. They look like regular old Easter eggs.

Discuss the symbolism of the egg as a tomb and as a symbol of new life.

Tell the kids you made some Easter eggs but you didn't remember to boil them first (not a lie). Talk about what would happen if you cracked open a raw egg. You can play this up and talk about how you need to be VERY careful because the a so fragile and you would hate for someone to get raw egg all over themselves.

See if you can get a volunteer to let you crack the egg over their head, or toss it around and "accidentally" break it over one of the kids. Everyone is usually surprised that some thing completely different comes out - not what they expected.

Talk about the women who went to the tomb and found something different than they expected. "He is not here. He is risen! (Luke 24:6a) We had a lot of fun with it the times I did it.

Linda Eberly First UMC Bennington, VT
Posted on Sermon Discussion list at www.desperatepreacher.com

Christ is risen

For some 70 years, the people in the Soviet Union had been taught God is no God, or is dead.  Jesus is not real, and certainly not alive.    It was OK for old ladies to venerate a buried corpse, but for two generations the power of the State had tried to stamp out any living faith in the living Lord.  The history had been re-written…

It was May Day, in Moscow’s Red Square, in 1990, just a few months before the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.  

“Is it straight, Father?” one Orthodox priest asked another, as he hefted a heavy, eight-foot crucifix onto his shoulder.

“Yes, it is straight,” said the other to him.

Together the two priests walked the parade route, along with a group of parishioners holding ropes which steadied the beams of the huge cross.  They were right in the midst of all the official might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in the usual May Day procession of tanks, missiles, troops, and salutes to the Communist party elite.

Behind all the tanks and military hardware surged a giant crowd of protesters, shouting up as they approached Mikhail Gorbachev, “Bread…Freedom…Truth!”

As the parade passed, this throng finally passed directly in front of the Soviet leader, standing in his place of honor.  At that moment the priests hoisted their heavy burden toward the sky.  The cross emerged up out of the crowd, now standing upright.  The figure of Jesus Christ towered over the giant poster faces of Marx, and Engels, and Lenin behind Gorbachev’s reviewing stand.

“Mikhail Serveyevich!” one of the protesters shouted, his deep voice cleaving the clamor of the protesters, and piercing straight toward the angry Soviet leader.  “Mikhail Sergeyevich!  Christ is risen!” 

From The Body, by Chuck Colson

The Garden Tomb of Jesus is famous because it is empty!

The pyramids of Egypt are famous because they contain the mummified bodies of ancient Egyptian kings. Westminster Abbey is noted because within its walls there are contained the remains of many nobles and notables. Muhammad’s tomb is visited because of the stone coffin and the bones there. Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D. C. is revered because it is a resting place for many outstanding Americans. But, the Garden Tomb of Jesus is famous because it is empty!

Leonid Brezhnev

As Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband.

Gary Thomas, in Christian Times, October 3, 1994, p. 26

How far God will go

Calvary shows how far men will go in sin, and how far God went for man's salvation.

H. D. Trumbull

It's Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’

Tony Campolo tells the story of a black Baptist preacher in the inner city of Philadelphia who preached a sermon Tony says he’ll never forget. Tony preached first. He was "hot," so "hot" he says, that he even stopped and listened to himself. He sat down and said to his pastor: "Now see if you can top that one!"

"Son," said the black pastor, "you ain’t seen nothin’ yet." For an hour and a half the pastor repeated these words over and over again: "It's Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’."

"I've never heard anything like it," Tony said. "He just kept saying it. The congregation was spellbound by the power of it."

"It’s Friday. Mary, Jesus’ mother is crying her eyes out. That’s her son up there on the cross. He’s dying the agonizing death of crucifixion as a criminal. But it’s only Friday," the preacher said. "Sunday's a comin’."

"The apostles were really down and out. Jesus, their leader, was being killed by evil men. But it was only Friday. Sunday is a comin’.

"The Devil thought he had won. ‘You thought you could outwit me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got you now.’ But it was only Friday. Sunday is a comin’."

"He went on like that for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour. Each time he said, ‘It's Friday,’ the crowd began to respond, ‘but Sunday’s comin’. An hour and 15 minutes.

"It's Friday and evil has triumphed over good. Jesus is dying up there on the cross. The world is turned upside down. This shouldn’t happen. But it’s only Friday. Sunday’s a comin’.

"It’s Friday. But Sunday is comin’. Mary Magdalene was out of her mind with grief.

Her Lord was being killed. Jesus had turned her life from sin to grace. Now he was dead. But it’s only Friday. Sunday is a comin’."

The place was rocking. For an hour and a half. "Friday! But Sunday is a comin’.

Friday. But Sunday is a comin’.

"The sisters and the brothers are suffering. It just isn’t fair...all they have to go through, but it’s only Friday. Sunday is comin’."

"I was exhausted," Tony said. "It was the best sermon I’ve ever heard. The old preacher was saying it and the people were with him. ‘It's Friday, but Sunday is a comin’. It was powerful," Tony said. "It was personal."

Tony Campolo, loosely quoted by Ronald J. Lavin in, "I Am the Resurrection and the Life."
Quoted from www.mthollywood.org/sermon12.htm

Some of us stay at the cross

Some of us stay at the cross,
some of us wait at the tomb,
Quickened and raised with Christ
yet lingering still in the gloom.
Some of us 'bide at the Passover feast
with Pentecost all unknown,
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place
that our Lord has made His own.
If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,
His work had been incomplete.
If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,
He had only known defeat,
But the way of the cross never stops at the cross
and the way of the tomb leads on
To victorious grace in the heavenly place
where the risen Lord has gone.

Annie Johnson Flint

God’s "Amen!"

The resurrection is God’s "Amen!" to Christ’s statement, "It is finished."

S. Lewis Johnson

Red Square

For some 70 years, the people in the Soviet Union had been taught God is no God, or is dead.  Jesus is not real, and certainly not alive.    It was OK for old ladies to venerate a buried corpse, but for two generations the power of the State had tried to stamp out any living faith in the living Lord.  The history had been re-written…

It was May Day, in Moscow’s Red Square, in 1990, just a few months before the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.  

“Is it straight, Father?” one Orthodox priest asked another, as he hefted a heavy, eight-foot crucifix onto his shoulder.

“Yes, it is straight,” said the other to him.

Together the two priests walked the parade route, along with a group of parishioners holding ropes which steadied the beams of the huge cross.  They were right in the midst of all the official might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in the usual May Day procession of tanks, missiles, troops, and salutes to the Communist party elite.

Behind all the tanks and military hardware surged a giant crowd of protesters, shouting up as they approached Mikhail Gorbachev, “Bread…Freedom…Truth!”

As the parade passed, this throng finally passed directly in front of the Soviet leader, standing in his place of honor.  At that moment the priests hoisted their heavy burden toward the sky.  The cross emerged up out of the crowd, now standing upright.  The figure of Jesus Christ towered over the giant poster faces of Marx, and Engels, and Lenin behind Gorbachev’s reviewing stand.

“Mikhail Serveyevich!” one of the protesters shouted, his deep voice cleaving the clamor of the protesters, and piercing straight toward the angry Soviet leader.  “Mikhail Sergeyevich!  Christ is risen!” 

From The Body, by Chuck Colson

The Empty Bird Cage

There once was a man named George Thomas, a pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning, he came to the Church carrying a rusty, bent, old bird cage, and set it by the pulpit.

Several eyebrows were raised and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak. "I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little wild birds, shivering with cold and fright. I stopped the lad and asked, " What you got there son?"

"Just some old birds," came the reply. "What are you gonna do with them?" I asked.

"Take 'em home and have fun with 'em," he answered. "I'm gonna tease 'em and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight. I'm gonna have a real good time."

"But you'll get tired of those birds sooner or later. What will you do then?"

"Oh, I got some cats," said the little boy. "They like birds. I'll take 'em to them."

The pastor was silent for a moment. "How much do you want for those birds, son?"

"Huh? Why, you don't want them birds, mister. They're just plain old field birds. They don't sing and they ain't even pretty!"

"How much?" the pastor asked again.

The boy sized up the pastor as if he were crazy and said, "$10." The pastor reached in his pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill. He placed it in the boy's hand. In a flash, the boy was gone.

The pastor picked up the cage and gently carried it to the end of the alley where there was a tree and a grassy spot. Setting the cage down, he opened the door, and by softly tapping the bars persuaded the birds out, setting them free.

Well, that explained the empty birdcage on the pulpit, and then the pastor began to tell this story.

"One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting. "Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people down there. Set me a trap, used bait I knew they couldn't resist. Got 'em all!"

"What are you going to do with them?" Jesus asked.

Satan replied, "Oh, I'm gonna have fun! I'm gonna teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I'm gonna teach them how to invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I'm really gonna have fun!"

"And what will you do when you get done with them?" Jesus asked.

"Oh, I'll kill 'em," Satan glared proudly.

"How much do you want for them?" Jesus asked.

Oh, you don't want those people. They ain't no good. Why, you'll take them and they'll just hate you. They'll spit on you, curse you and kill you!! You don't want those people!!

"How much?" He asked again.

Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, "All your tears, and all your blood."

Jesus said, "DONE!" Then He paid the price.

The pastor picked up the cage, he opened the door, and he walked from the pulpit.

From the Sermon Fodder Email List

Because He Lives

This is a video from Igniter Media www.ignitermedia.com

I used this video during a baptism service and it was very powerful.

This song was born out of trying times for Bill and Gloria Gaither. Each day was becoming a struggle. They faced huge uncertainty in the days ahead. But through it all, they were reminded that life, in both the good and bad times, is worth the living because Jesus lives.

It's About The Cross

This is a video from YouTube. The song is by a group called Go Fish and is brilliant - I used this during may sermon at our Midnight Communion Service on Christmas Eve. There are other alternatives to this on YouTube, just search for "It's About the Cross"