Sermon 30 April 2006
3 Easter, Year B
Acts 3:11 – 26

The passage of Scripture we have before us this morning re-traces our steps through the same story we talked about last week, where Peter and John went up to the Temple in the mid-afternoon for prayer. On their way in, they meet a paralyzed beggar, who asks them for money. Peter tells him, “Sorry, man. I don’t have any money. But what I do have, I’ll give you: in the Name of Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk!� And Peter raises him up, and the man begins not just walking, but leaping and jumping up and down and shouting praise to God. For those days, he was an older man: he was over 40 years old. In an age when most people died in their early 60s, at the latest, he was considered “past his prime.� An old guy. The way Luke writes about his age in this passage indicates that for him, over 40 is a “senior citizen.�

People come running from all over the temple – an area larger than a football stadium – to see what is going on with this man. So Peter speaks to the crowd that gathers. That’s the passage we’ve got in front of us this morning.
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It Was Twenty Years Ago…

… this week that an explosion occurred at Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in northern Ukraine. It triggered what the United Nations has described as ‘the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity’.

The explosion released 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spread a cloud of radioactive particles across a huge swathe of Europe. Several million people still live in contaminated areas. Between the stricken regions of Belarus, Western Russian and Northern Ukraine, the UN estimates that up to 9 million people have been affected by the fallout.

Via U2.com

Ok… today was REALLY long.

Can’t go into it here.

Tomorrow and Saturday I will be in Columbus for a Continuing Education event. Probably won’t have wi-fi.

Peace out.

CUTTING-EDGE artificial intelligence it was not, but a student prank still managed to get the better of some human intelligences last week, when a computer-generated piece of gibberish was accepted as a genuine scientific paper.

Sick of receiving spam emails requesting submissions to the 2005 World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics - which charges $390 for each attendee - students Jeremy Stribling, Daniel Aguayo and Maxwell Krohn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a program to generate a nonsense paper.

Starting with skeleton sentences, pools of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and a random assortment of computer science jargon, the program produced a grammatically correct yet utterly nonsensical paper titled: “Rooter: a methodology for the typical unification of access points and redundancy”. “This isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s the dirt-simplest way we could think to do this,” Stribling says.

The conference organisers say that the paper was sent to human reviewers, who never commented on it, so it ended up being automatically accepted. The conference has now banned the paper. But the pranksters are still planning to give a computer-generated talk at the conference by persuading a human speaker to let them take his or her place.

From NewScientistTech via /.

Wow. This is actually quite a complicated prank if you consider the grasp of the English language it would take to write a program to generate theoretically-readable English from random words. Especially complicated if you know anything about how engineers tend to write in the first place.

Today began the centennial celebration of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, CA.

At least 20,000 people from more than 100 countries have converged here to mark the 100th anniversary of the modern Pentecostal movement.

For five days, beginning Tuesday (April 25), Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are commemorating a revival at a converted stable on Azusa Street that launched the movement that is now the fastest growing segment of Christianity.

(more via Beliefnet)

This Revival marked the first major practice of the gift of Tongues in the church in modern times. The Pentecostal Revival spawned countless denominations and ministries; it is now the fastest-growing segment of the church throughout the world. It is slated to be the dominant force in the church throughout the world within a decade.

I am grateful to be a part of this widespread movement. The renewal of the practice of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit has profoundly affected my life and ministry - and will, God willing, long into the future. Many are wise to be cautious of the movement’s excesses. Overall, however, the greatest gift of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is that the Gifts of the Spirit are active in the Body of Christ throughout the world. These gifts know no denominational boundary or stylistic form.

Holy Spirit, come and be present to us. Fill us with yourself in increasing measure. Empower us to do the work of ministry together, in whatever form that takes. Thank you for your work among us - especially these last 100 years.

Amen.

(Azusa Centennial Convention Site)

Sermon 23 April 2006
2 Easter, Year B
Acts 4:32 – 36

Last Monday was Tax Day. Of course, this meant that there were the standard news stories on the local stations of people still standing in line at the Post Offices and in front of computer terminals trying to e-file their returns at the last minute. As usual, there was the standard moaning and groaning as to how high their taxes were. Comments of “I give the government all this money and I don’t get anything in return� were common. The interviewees on the news expressed the general consensus that Income Taxes are a payment to the government for certain governmental goods and services which they were expecting but never received in satisfactory proportions.

When I was a small child, I asked my dad why we pay taxes. He answered that we pay taxes to pave the roads, pay the soldiers and the firemen, and keep the schools going. That answer must have satisfied me because I don’t remember ever having a conversation about taxes again until I began earning money in High School and had to file a return myself.
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The last two days have been filled with major work around the house, most of it outside.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day outside working in the yard. I had to rearrange my compost pile and dissect my not-composting-very-well Christmas tree to encourage its inhumation.* I weeded the garden and cleaned up the stuff that insists on winding itself around every link of the chain-link fence. Half the time, the roots are on my neighbor’s side of the fence. So we’ll be doing this again soon.

After I completed that project, I began the slow process of scraping my house in preparation for painting. I began with the small side of the house (the back) to see how it was going to go down. The paint in most places was peeling, but peeling at about 3/32″ in depth. Yep. 81 years worth of paint on one house gets pretty deep. The trim was at least white and yellow a few times. However, it was never PRIMED. So it all came off. Scraping, sanding, and heat gun. That’s intense, I know. That’s just for the trim. The main part of the house, well, it’s going to be a bit more “fast and loose.” But you can see the trim from the windows of the house from the inside. I want it to look good.

Anyhow, the trim was probably yellowish originally. The windowsills and sashes were originally black. The shingle siding… welllllll… it’s currently white. Below that is some sort of beige. Below THAT is some sort of purplish-magenta-red, kind of like the faded upholstry parts of that burgundy Bonneville boat we drove when I was a kid. (The one that lost its wheel.)

So much for going with the original color scheme. I’m not really interested in a burgundy upper half above my brick with yellow trim and black accents. I’m not sure what color the corbeling and eaves were because they are concealed under aluminum and vinyl soffit parts. I’m assuming either yellow or black.

Well. Once I get a little further along I’ll decide for certain on a color.

Amidst all of this, another little project cropped up. The, ahem, “chaise percée” has not been flushing well for most of the year I’ve lived here. Flapper fell too fast, among other things. It was one of those “hold the handle and watch” sit-chi-ations. Recently, the works have taken to getting hung up and entangled on themselves, such that the daggone thing never quits running full tilt.

So, after $20 in parts, a 2nd trip to Lowe’s for a $18 pipe wrench, and a modicum of mopping up water from the clean side of the orifice, I now have a fully functional “necessary room” for the first time in nearly a year.

And after that, I went back to scraping paint.

It’s amazing what one can get done in a day of solid work. I’m motivated now.

*(Warren has no Christmas Tree pickup in January, and I didn’t feel like getting needles all over my car and perhaps taking some of the paint off. So it’s being composted. I hope. Now, if you’re wondering what inhumation means, it means, in this case, to turn something into “humus” - by having it rot. It can also mean burial. That may happen, too.)

The First Baptist Church of Warren has just put up a new version of our website, thanks to the hard-working efforts of our webmaster, Dillon Fishel. The site is still developing, and we’re looking for suggestions as to content, formatting, etc.

We intend FBCWarren.com to be the web presence of the First Baptist Church of Warren to carry out our congregation’s mission as followers of Jesus Christ together. Please stop by!

Here are the issues:

• The world is interested in Jesus but not in the church
• The true measure of how well the church is doing is transformed lives while we focus on attendance
• The church has ceded ground to parachurch ministries becoming less relevant
• We use the attractional approach to church tempting us to compromise the gospel message
• Wherever the church follows the western pattern it is in decline

I hear myself saying the first two and the last two ALL THE TIME. And now I can show that it’s NOT JUST ME.

In Organic Church by Neil Cole (San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2005) via Leighton Tebay.

I keep saying it over and over again: I know MANY people who are interested in Jesus and don’t give the church a second thought - or run the other way - because THEY DON’T SEE JESUS IN THE CHURCH. Perhaps we’ve hidden him too well in a “Where’s Waldo” situation where there’s so much else going on that is irrelevant to Jesus that he is only a small component of what we do. And when we do find him, he’s in dorky glasses and blue jeans.

The second is perhaps the most important: the true measure of the success of a church is in the transformed lives. People transformed by the radical message of Jesus so that they can live Kingdom Life and invite, equip and empower others to do the same. If that is, in fact, the true measure of success for the church, MANY churches in America are utter failures. As long as we remain in the “Church ABCs” mode (focus on Attendance, Buildings and Cash), then we will fail because we are measuring THE WRONG THINGS.

When we refuse to measure life transformation in Christian Education, we are doing the same thing. Mere attendance at Sunday School or a Worship Service where the Word is preached does not lead to transformed character any more than going to prison pays our debt to society and rehabilitates us. Somehow, some way, we must receive and open ourselves to the transforming power of God to put a new will in us or else we’ll just be “doing time.”

Moreover, whenever we use the “attractional approach,” we risk denying the Gospel of Christ if it will cause our crowds to disperse - especially those with lush pocketbooks. Only an organic, relational, missional approach will keep us from these issues. Then we assume that people are much more on board before we incorporate them into leadership and make them part of the church economy.

Finally, the Western (read 1950s - 1970s American, for starters) model of church is failing all over the world. The more “para” style churches are succeeding - in terms of transformed lives AND numbers - all over the world. Get it?

God is doing something new in the world - something that he’s been doing since time began. It’s up to us to either join the cast of characters for this new thing or fade to black. We will go willingly in either direction. It’s all a matter of which we want. That’s a message for the entire Western Church.

Here’s one person’s take on what happens when an church goes from having a lot of money to very little money:

they fold because they have ministry jacked up to artificially high levels, that is, they have more programs and staff and equipment needs than their people can conceivably give for and support… and when that gap between actual giving and budget needs hits, they need to start laying off staff. And that’s a spiral that the heavy-initial-investment, programmatic church model can’t handle. When the staff starts going, that equates to a cut in services, and the people soon start edging out the back door for some place down the road with something new and exciting (and better funded!) going on…

Grim? Yeah…

Does it happen to everyone who starts with a big wad of cash? Of course not.

Could it? Oh yeah…

So why not start simple? Let it grow organically…

from NextWave via Jordon

When you have an inflated “church program” and you can’t fund it, the whole ship sinks. Better to do less for a while until something else has time to grow.

That’s my strategy, at least.

Wow.

The Ohio campaign ads from BOTH major parties are getting really ugly.

These folks just hate each other.

It really turns me off.

From both of them.

It seems to be an anger-generating campaign, not really something useful for the people of Ohio.

I just added five new albums to my Gallery.

Here are some samples:

Album: Warren Winter Photographic Expedition

Album: Warren Spring Photographic Expedition

Album: Gardening Project [incomplete, of course]

Album: Warren Spring Color

Album: FBC Warren Stained Glass [incomplete pending photo development]

And one more just for good measure:

Sermon 16 April 2006
Easter Sunday, Year B
Mark 16:1 – 8

“?!?�

Have you ever read a good book? Especially a good mystery novel? Often there are clues hidden in the story that you never see until you get to the end and there is the “Aha!� moment.

So it is with the book of Mark.

All throughout the book of Mark, our brother Mark has been placing clues about who Jesus is that don’t make much sense until we get to this passage in chapter 16. So let’s listen now to the story, beginning there in 16:1.

When the story opens, the women assume that Jesus is dead. They go as early as they can and buy spices to anoint his body with. This in itself was risky. Jesus was executed as a criminal. Often, ancient societies continued the humiliation of the criminal by leaving his body out, improperly buried, to prove how unworthy of respect he was. The women might have run afoul of the authorities just by doing this sincere act of love and respect. Given the powerful people who had called for Jesus’ execution, who knows how many of their spies and cronies were waiting at the tomb to arrest his followers do away with them, too.
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Easter Sunrise Service
Gathering in Expectation

8:30 AM: Invocation and Statement of Purpose

Unison Celebration:

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels,
and let your trumpets shout Salvation
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Choir: My Lord, What a Morning

Prayer of Victory:

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our
whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible,
almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Passover Lamb, who
at the feast of the Passover paid the debt of our sin,
and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children
of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the
Red Sea on dry land.

This is the dawn, when all who believe in Christ are delivered
from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness
of life.

This is the day, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell,
and rose victorious from the grave.

How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your
mercy and loving kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you
gave a Son.

How holy is this glorious morning, when wickedness is put to flight, and
sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy
to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings
peace and concord.

How blessed is this day, when earth and heaven are joined
and humanity is reconciled to God.

For all these things we give thanks to You, Almighty Father, to You, Glorious Son, and to you, Blessed Holy Spirit – one God in three persons, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.
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Maundy Thursday

Gathering as the People of God
Salutation: Praise God who forgives all our sins. His mercy endures forever.

Entrance Hymn: “What Wondrous Love is This�

Psalm 78 excerpts
Invocation
Announcements and Service Directions

Service of the Word
Reading and Demonstration of Scripture: John 13:1 – 15

Sermon

Response: While Scripture is read, those who participated in the John 13 demonstration will offer such services to any who will take them up on it.

Hymn
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

Service of the Table
Prayer of Dedication

Offertory: “’Tis Midnight and on Olive’s Brow�

Communion

Thanksgiving Prayer

Hymn: “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded� – during this Hymn, the candles will all be extinguished.

Departing into Christ’s Passion
Prayers of the Passion – (from John 17?) – during this time, the table(s), pulpit and lectern will be covered in burlap or other dark, rough cloth.

The Scripture of the Betrayal: Mark 14:27 – 50. During this time, the lights will all go down except the light on the cross by which the reader(s) of Scripture will see.

At the end, all the lights, except on the cross, will be out. Then we shall hear the cock’s crow, and the Nave lights shall come up enough to get out… quickly… silently…

The ushers should have penlights to help people get out of the seats.