Transformational Small Churches webinar recap

I thoroughly enjoyed the “Transformational Small Churches” webinar that Ed Stetzer‘s team at LifeWay put on today.

Very thankful for web-streaming technology and the ability to tune into the broadcast with hundreds of others to be encouraged and challenged.

I took some notes during the 7-hour event and posted them here.

Sunday Review | 2010.09.05

Ever had difficulty with the Gospel-account of Jesus turning over the tables in the temple and driving out the money-changers? This story didn’t usually get illustrated in flannel-graph as I was growing up – the pictures of Jesus I see haven’t portrayed an ‘angry’ Jesus – ever.

This Sunday we dove into the subject of Anger in our “Holy & Human” series and discussed our human responses to anger versus what a holy response should be.

It was our first Sunday without our pianist (she was on vacation) and we used some .mov files of iWorship Tracks. While I would much rather have LIVE music over canned, I am thankful for the technology and availability of iWorship and similar media.

Audio from “Challenging Anger” is available here.

Sunday Review | 2010.08.29

I preached the third message in our current series, “Holy & Human” this week. This week’s message was entitled, “Conquering Fear” and reminded us that although there are many books on the subject of ridding our lives of all fear, that is not a part of God’s plan. We have been designed with fear – and some fear keeps us safe. It’s when fear overtakes us and becomes an idol in our life that we find trouble.

This week we had my cousin, Brock and his family visiting us from the Washington, DC area. Jess and I enjoyed singing FFH’s “One of These Days” with Brock for special music. After my sermon this week we also had Rev. Randy Swink, our District Superintendent, visiting and he performed our official pastoral installation ceremony.

It was a great and exhausting Sunday. The night before, Brock and I joined a couple of guys from the church and we drove to Harrisburg to serve the homeless with the Bethesda Mobile Mission.

Sunday Review | 2010.08.22

This morning I preached the second message in the series, “Holy & Human” entitled, “Overwhelmed but Unmoved” which reminded us to respond to overwhelming situations by acknowledging our limitations, accomplishing something, and thinking about “such things” (remembering our focus).

Of course on the Sunday I preach about how we should respond to being overwhelmed I was quite overwhelmed. From technology issues to music issues, it was a challenge to work through the issues of the day and focus solely on worship and the Word but the Lord prevailed and I felt like it was a good morning.

Sadly my attempt at recording the sermon failed again this week, posing as another area of frustration that I need to get sorted out before next week!

New Church Website

I’ve been working some late-nights over the last few days on our new church website. I am thankful for help from one of my tech-friendly and knowledgeable church guys, Tom, who has put the same – if not more – hours into making it happen!

The site is built on the Joomla CMS (content management system). I am very proud of what we’ve come up with and where the site is headed in the future days and weeks.

Check out the full site at http://www.firstwesleyanship.org