I found this video very challenging. Too think it's produced by a fast food company. It speaks deeply to my heart as a Christ follower. If a fast food company want people to take time to read other people story then maybe, just maybe, Jesus wants me too as well.
Every Life Has A Story - Chick-fil-A from Dan T. Cathy on Vimeo.
For the few people involved in church leadership that drop by here from time to time, Elevation Church have just joined the growing number of churches that are giving away resources they have developed. (well done guys!)
This is a great Kingdom mindset. Below is a link to their site and also a few others:
Elevation Resources
LifeChurch.tv Open
Southeast Christian Church
Open Resources
New Worship Media
Although not quite the same quality we at MKCC have started to offer some of our items for download here.
This saves churches like us a huge amount of time and finance!
There is a movie about Jesus life called "The Greatest Story Ever Told". I agree it is.
In our churches (and outside) we need to ensure firstly we are telling people about Jesus. No other message will do. Only Jesus can make the difference in our lives. Second we must communicate his story in the best, relevant and most creative way we can. The greatest story deserves the greatest effort.
Sometime I am surprised how boring we can make it.
So I was interested to read this article about how the Church of England is trying to assist their churches in putting on services that harness modern technology and use modern culture to engage people.
Don't always agree with the Archbishop of Canterbury but here is what he said:
"The Bible is full of stories about God communicating through act and sign as well as language ... Far from being bound to communication through clear information economically expressed in words, our society is still deeply sensitive to symbols and inclined to express important feelings and perceptions in this way."I'm with him.
I am obviously getting old because if this was the only list of the 10 Commandments I had I wouldn't have a clue.
M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl.
ttyl, JHWH.
Seriously what?
(HT: Church Crunch)
It was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. - 1 Cor 1 v 21
Some have suggested that preaching is a little old hat. I'm with Spurgeon on this.
Personally, I have to bless God for many good books…but my gratitude most of all is due to God, not for books, but for the preached Word—and that too addressed to me by a poor, uneducated man, a man who had never received any training for the ministry, and probably will never be heard of in this life, a man engaged in business, no doubt of a humble kind, during the week, but who had just enough of grace to say on the Sabbath, "Look unto Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth."
The books were good, but the man was better. The revealed Word awakened me, but it was the preached Word that saved me; and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights.
Here is the intro video we used to start our new series at MKCC last Sunday
When Love Comes to Town Opener from Billy Ritchie on Vimeo.
Well I suppose the title of the post got you reacting already in one of two ways.
Earlier this year we participated in a teaching campaign with 1000's of other churches around the world called One Prayer. It was a huge success for us. The other week we showed as part of our hope series a video message of Louie Giglio - The Anchor of Hope. It was an incredible message!!
What saddened me was that I was told that a few of our regular attenders chose to stay away because it was video teaching. Well if that is you and you are reading this I need to tell you, you missed out.
If God can speak though a donkey then he sure can use a man through the medium of video. Why is it that sometimes in the church we are last to adopt the technology that God is giving us to spread the gospel. (People thought the printing press was from the devil)
Yes I know its in America but I also have heard of incredible stories about people in the Indian bush, seeing the Jesus movie and whole villages following Jesus. Lets open our mind to what God can accomplish through the technology we have today.
If in any further doubt please read this post by Perry Noble:
"Does video teaching work?
This question was the center of a lot of debate a few years ago…and it has been answered very quickly…YES!!!
Yesterday we launched our new location in Florence, SC and had 189 people show up…which is WAY more than we were anticipating.
For those who don’t know…we do not have a permanent facility down there…we do the load in/load out thing…and the service yesterday was a “preview service.” (We will have another one in two weeks.)
SO…after our 11:15 service in Anderson I called Michael Brown, our campus pastor, to see how the service went.
He picked up the phone and said, “Hey man, I am SO sorry–have you been trying to call me?”
I thought that was a weird way to begin the conversation…so I said, “No, why are you asking?”
He said, “My phone has been blowing up but I haven’t been able to answer it because I was meeting with a guy who came to our service this morning.”
I then asked him how things went and he said, “Dude, the MOST exciting thing that took place was the meeting I just had with the guy who showed up today. This was the first time he’s been to church in 20 years…and I just led him to Christ!”
I about ran off the road!!! Seriously…I was so excited that I literally lost my awareness of how fast I was driving! THAT ABSOLUTELY PUMPED ME UP!!!
Because…
You must understand that we are launching Florence in a unique way. Sam, our worship pastor, led worship with just a microphone and an acoustic guitar…no band, no drums…just Sam.
AND…we showed a video of a message I preached at the Anderson campus in January of 2007. (To which Michael said everyone was interacting with!)
All that taken into consideration…and a guy who hadn’t been to church in 20 years met Christ!
Our vision for Florence is to one day see NewSpring Church in a permanent facility; however, the way that a vision is accomplished is one step at a time–and today the first step was taken in planting a church in that area of the state that has a passion to see people far from God come to know His Son and have their life changed forever.
Florence…he’s the first of thousands in your community that are going to have their lives changed!!! Keep on praying, serving and inviting your friends…God has great things in store.
Does video teaching work? There’s a guy in Florence, SC that is now going to spend eternity in heaven because a church refused to believe that church has to be done the way it’s always been done! I am sure he would say he’s thankful!!!
God is doing great things THROUGH technology…and I can’t wait to see what happens next!!"
I next attended a breakout session by Tony Morgan on communication. It was titled "Ten Steps to becoming blogging BFS" I am going to show my ignorance and probably my age but I still have no idea what BFS stands for. Please enlighten me.
Tim Stevens from Granger Community church is presently writing a book about pop culture and the church. Imaginatively titles - Pop Goes the Church.
In it he has paraphrased a paraphrased version - the message.
The Message Paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2
“Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering…Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Tim's Pop Culture Paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2
"Take your everyday, ordinary life—going to the movies, watching TV, listening to your XM radio, flipping through the pages of People Magazine—and place it before God as an offering. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, always be looking for God in the culture. You’ll be changed from the inside out. While sitting on the couch surfing channels or listening to the Top 20 on the radio, always be looking for what God wants you to do, who He wants you to be, and quickly respond to it. Don’t let the culture drag you down to its level, but maintain an awareness of God in the culture and keep watching for the next step you can take toward Christ.”
Reminded me again to make sure I am relevant in my communication to todays world to ensure this great message of Jesus is clearly understood.
Tim Stevens, Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church is in the process of writing a book about the Church and Pop Culture. Help him and his publishers out by completing the following Survey.
Book Survey
One of the actions we have taken as a church recently is the formation of a communications team. Church is all about people and one the things we are constantly trying to do is communicate. We are communicating the most important message on the planet. Jesus loves people and gave His life to make a relationship possible.
We want to get better at communicating this message. We know that is Jesus that makes the difference but we owe it to Him to do our best to tell as many people as we can in a real and relevant way so they don't miss the message.
We want to improve every aspect of our communication from preaching to a newsletter. This takes time, effort, money and of course creativity but isn't Jesus worth it?
Heads up to Tim who blogged about this video today. Think about the creativity, the time and the finance that went into this proposal. Are we prepared to put the same commitment into telling someone about Jesus when they attend our church.
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