EChurch@Wartburg – 6.24.12

Welcome to Our Gathering of EChurch@Wartburg


Enhanced Rainbow by Barb Ver Sluis

Here is our order of worship

The Praises of God from Saint Francislink
You are holy, Lord, the only God,
and your deeds are wonderful.
You are love, you are wisdom.
You are humility, you are endurance.
You are rest, you are peace.
You are joy and gladness.
You are all our riches, and you suffice for us.
You are beauty, you are gentleness.
You are our protector,
You are our guardian and defender.
You are courage,
You are our haven and hope.
You are our faith, our greatest consolation.
You are our eternal life, great and wonderful Lord,
God almighty, merciful Saviour.
Amen


A Prayer of Martin Lutherlink
Behold, Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled. My Lord, fill it.
I am weak in the faith; strengthen me.
I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor.
I do not have a strong and firm faith; at times I doubt and am unable to trust you altogether. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in you.
In you I have sealed the treasure of all I have.
I am poor; you are rich and came to be merciful to the poor.
I am a sinner; you are upright.
With me, there is an abundance of sin; in you is the fullness of righteousness.
Therefore I will will remain with you, of whom I can receive, but to whom I may not give.
Amen.

If you are new to EChurch, please click on this link for an explanation

Note to our EChurch participants: Wade Burleson is away for three Sundays in a row, so we will be featuring the three messages he delivered just prior to our launching of EChurch back in February. These are wonderful messages from Hebrews.

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:5-7(NASB Bible Gateway)

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, But a body You have prepared for Me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure. “ Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (In the scroll of the book it is written of Me) To do Your will, O God.’”.

A Prayer by Henri Nouwen link
Why do I keep relating to you as one of my many relationships, instead of my only relationship, in which all other ones are grounded?
Why do I keep looking for popularity, respect from others, success, acclaim, and sensual pleasures?
Why, Lord, is it so hard for me to make you the only one? Why do i keep hesitating to surrender myself totally to you ?
Help me, O Lord, to let my old self die, to let die the thousand big and small ways in which I am still building up my false self and trying to cling to my false desires.
Let me be reborn in you and see through you the world in the right way, so that all my actions, words, thoughts can become a hymn of praise to you.
I need your loving grace to travel on this hard road that leads to the death of my old self and to a new life in and for you.
I know and trust that this is the road to freedom. Lord, dispel my mistrust and help me become a trusting friend.
Amen.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:3

Thank you for spending your precious time worshipping the Lord.

Comments

EChurch@Wartburg – 6.24.12 — 17 Comments

  1. What a wonderful place this is! I’m so blessed to have found this e-church. The hymns and prayers are beautiful and the sermon today was excellent! I’d never heard the Feasts explained that way before.

    Thanks again to all of you for making this possible!

  2. I want to add that I especially love that I can listen to one hymn as many times as I want to. It’s also so helpful to be able to pause Pastor’s sermon when taking notes or backtrack if need be. Those benefits make this type of service really special for me. And the love that went into producing them is evident every single week.

  3. Victorious,

    I listen to the songs more than once sometimes, too.

    I thought Wade’s sermon was so enlightening. I had never heard the Jewish festivals discussed that way before.

    I’m so glad you enjoy the songs and prayers. We LOVE our TWW family so much!

  4. Deb, I felt the same about the festivals. I’m not sure how to word this properly and without sounding too “mushy,” but there are very few pastors I’ve heard over 30+ yrs. who are as annointed in teaching and preaching as Wade is. The scripture just flows and his is a man of God who is equipped for every good work.

    P.S. I still think he has a photographic memory….lol

  5. IMPORTANT NOTE: Someone made false reports to Symantec that Julie Anne’s and the site and the FBC JAX Watchdog site are malicious phishing sites. These sites were briefly on their list of such sites prior to a fuller investigation, which apparently cleared the sites. However, if you use Symantec and happened to update the list in your system during the time those sites were on the list, you may get a warning. You can do a manual update of the lists easily, just by clicking on the icon for your security system.

    If you use some other security provider and find yourself blocked for one of the sites you regularly use, please notify the operator of the blocked site and your security provider.

  6. @ Deb:
    Deb, opps. I have corresponded with Dee about this. Ask her to forward the correspondence. In a simple word, we don’t know, but it wasn’t put on the list. May either be because it wasn’t reported, or by the time it was, Symantec, the security provider, decided the person at that address was submitting false phishing claims and disregarded it. The other two sites were not on the list very long, perhaps less than 4 hours. Check with Dee for the correspondence.

  7. An Artorney

    I appreciate your quick reply. Dee forwarded the emails, so I am now up-to-date. Thanks for. being so alert!

  8. Mark
    Life gets very confusing when I have empathy for something Ed says. Was it Reformed or the Neo Calvinists?

  9. He said reformed theology but it was clear that he was referring to a movement which is taking over the church. I held my nose and watched the sermon online just to hear what he would say. At one point he had the entire audience on their feet applauding. It’s obvious he feels they a threat since he kept saying that these churches are poaching the young. (Huh… pot meet kettle). At one point he referred to a “fair-haired” preacher who only baptized 26 people last year (of course comparing HIS baptisms which are 100 fold) Not sure who he was referring to.
    You should watch it and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Remember, even a broken clock is right twice a day. 🙂

  10. Mark
    Thank you for the laugh of the day. I’ll look at it later tonight. So, how many of Ed’s baptisms are due to faith and how many are due to wanting a house and jet like him? The day my husband and I joined FC (yes, we all have to learn), we were interviewed by a man who asked us “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?” Bored by such a softball question, I listened in to a conversation going on between one of my neighbors and her interviewer. She answered the question in the affirmative. I started to snort since I knew her enough to know her yes accompanied a belief that she was a nice person and nice people go to heaven.

    She ended up teaching in the children’s Sunday school. Two years later she left and told me i should try her new church, The Unity Church. She said it was just like FC but the pastor was more humble!!! Talk about a screwed up theology! Two year in FC and thinks Unity is just like FC.It says more about FC than Unity.

  11. Trust me when I say that not many thinking people stay with Fellowship Church. The ones who’ve stayed have quite the followers mentality. They openly oppose anyone on Facebook who questions Ed’s preaching.

    For FC True Believers, once you start digesting anything other than the Ed Young authored book of the week or the Ed Young DVD of the week peddled from the pulpit, you start to see that there are other Christians who are steadfast in keeping the gospel alive and true. It’s not that Ed Young is necessarily wrong in the gospel, it’s his persona, the love for money and twisted scripture with regards to tithing. He preaches against materialism but that doesn’t seem to apply to himself. After all, he tithes his legal 10% and feels justified to spend the remaining millions for himself. Just wrong. His faithful lap it up.

  12. I just shopped at a Dollar Tree to buy paint brushes (which work great and I don't mind tossing after one or two uses).

    As I walked in the front door, my eyes fell on a stack of books with the title Kids, Inc. by Ed Young. Maybe they'll be selling his sex book soon…

  13. My experience gwoirng up in a medium sized church in the US (approx 250) was that it was easy to just show up and leave without anyone really taking notice. I found the experience of attending a smaller church of about 100 in the UK very different. (I was there for three years.) While I had as much freedom to easily come and go, I definitely felt it was more noticed in the smaller church. I began to build relationships there which resulted in me staying longer, led to stronger friendships, discipleship, and eventually the realization that I hadn’t ever followed Jesus, even though I’d always thought I was a Christian. I observed a real community and deeper fellowship there in that smaller church that I hadn’t seen before. In hindsight I think it was a picture of how the church is described in Acts.In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point he talks about the theory that 150 is a magic number where he describes a social phenomenon seen across multiple types of communities (schools, workplaces, etc). I’m paraphrasing but basically the idea is that approximately 150 persons is the maximum number of people whom we can interact with without feeling that we don’t know how we relate to them. When workplaces rise above that number they have observed productivity levels come to a plateau even while adding additional workers. The idea is that above that number, people begin to feel like numbers and don’t think that what they do really matters or makes a difference. I felt that the missional church video above was spot-on in describing church members who don’t think they need to personally prepare themselves to share the gospel, and instead think that bringing someone to church and leaving it up to the pastor is evangelism. I think there can be a real danger in a large church where members can begin to depend on the pastors and elders to do the job that I think we are each called to do.I don’t know if the model of a big attractional church really works I think the people inside the church probably think it’s an attractive model that works but I’m not sure that the people outside would think the same. As to being attractive , the apostle Paul talks about being all things to all men but logically one large church can’t be all things to all men, really it can only be a few key things to only a certain type of people. I think it’s the reason why there tends to be a dominant homogenous group in a church, plus a few attenders in fringe groups. In thinking about how we should do church, I find it very helpful to think about Jesus’ model of discipling only 12 men over the course of three years with the goal of sending them out to be disciple makers in their own right. I think we see the same model followed by Paul as he trains up other men to plant churches. I find it helpful to remember the cliche that God has no grandchildren. I would love to see churches begin to plant when they get too large I feel that this would encourage people who haven’t felt needed before to step up to the plate and reveal talents and gifts we haven’t seen before, or for previously dependent people to realize they too can be equipped to become leaders too. I also feel that large churches can make the mistake of depending on the strength of its people whereas perhaps small churches might by necessity be forced to depend on the One whose strength matters, to His glory!