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The latest message in the series, “Church on Fire” will not be added this week as electricity was out in our church this Sunday and so we ended up not having our usual morning service. I will be preaching the message next Sunday (October 29) and following that I’ll post the latest message.
“We need to understand that the wild card in all of our efforts at church growth is the sovereignty of God. God causes the church to grow for his own pleasure and to advance his sovereign purposes not ours.” - Samuel D. Rima, Re-thinking the Successful Church (Baker, 2002)
“The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things.” - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
“The hallmark of western civilization has been rugged individualism. Because of our philosophy of life, we are used to the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my’ and ‘me.’ We have not been taught to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘our’ and ‘us.’ Consequently, we individualize many references to corporate experience in the New Testament, thus often emphasizing personal prayer. The facts are that more is said in the book of Acts and the epistles about corporate prayer, corporate learning of biblical truth, corporate evangelism, and corporate Christian maturity and growth than about the personal aspects of these Christian disciplines… The personal dimensions of Christianity are difficult to maintain and practice unless they grow out of a proper corporate experience on a regular basis.” - Gene Getz in Praying for One Another (Chariot Victor, 1982)
I came across this neat site at Group’s Unforgettables.org. Basically it’s a place where you can get various – what Group calls – “Unforgettable Experience Packages” that you can use as teaching aids when sharing a message to your congregation. Some of the things on the site are:
For each item they have some suggested messages that can go along with them. The idea is that when you have the congregation participate in doing something rather than just passively listening then the message will have more impact. Group has priced these items fairly cheaply and it looks like it could be a good resource. It’s definitely a site that will go in my “ideas” folder!