Prayer Walking Vollintine Evergreen
September 30, 2010
While walking and chewing gum at the same time is a challenge for some of us, a merry band of Living Hopers recently demonstrated their agility by simultaneously walking and praying throughout the Vollintine Evergreen Historic District of mid-town Memphis. The location is strategic as we look forward to the day when a Living Hope church plant is rooted and established in Vollintine Evergreen. Towards that end, 36 men, women, youth and children gathered on Saturday to share a nutritious snack of donuts and juice, divvy themselves into five teams, grab a map of the neighborhood with a highlighted route and set out to walk and pray.
The instructions were simple pray onsite with insight. That’s really all prayer walking is. God was so gracious to provide us the best possible weather, and there were several festivals going on in the area on the appointed day. So, some prayer walkers encountered residents and visitors on their route for whom specific prayers were offered. We passed by and prayed for several schools including Vollentine Elementary, which Living Hope Church as adopted through the Memphis City Schools’ Adopt-a-School program.
The prayer walk began and ended at our home on N. Belvedere, and the new home of Benjamin and Heather Cox on Dickinson was visited and prayed over by two prayer-walking teams. How exciting to see Living Hopers move into the neighborhood to show the love of Jesus to the Vollintine Evergreen residents and point them to Christ. McClean Baptist church was on one route. Living Hope students are hosting a neighborhood party at that church for the kids of VE this evening. Pray for McClean Baptist and Living Hope as we come together to minister to the children of VE.
Vollintine Evergreen is one of those Memphis communities that include big, fine homes with well-manicured lawns as well as boarded-up, blighted houses. The contrast is striking, and the stories behind the homes are telling. Walking by these homes, schools, churches and even businesses of Vollintine Evergreen allows the mind to wonder, “What is the story of this home, the students of this school, the worshippers of this church and the owner of this business establishment? As we wonder, we pray to the Lord for the people of this place to know Him. For lives to be redeemed, for homes to be rebuilt, for students to learn and thrive, for churches to be filled to overflowing with true worshippers, for businesses owners to know Christ. Jesus loves the people of Vollintine Evergreen and He is their Living Hope!
-Alan May
Summing Up Acts
September 29, 2010
I’ve recently been reading Harvie Conn’s book Evangelism:Doing Justice and Preaching Grace. Conn wrote the book back in 1982, but it is just as relevant (and prophetic in many ways!) today as it was then. This book is an excellent follow-up and summary of our recent study of the book of Acts. Here are some great quotes that I’ve marked thus far:
Quoting Bonhoeffer: “The first service one owes to others consists in listening to them. We should listen with the ears of God, that we may speak the Word of God.”
“Without a pastoral dimension, the offense of the gospel too easily is understood as the offensiveness of the church.”
and my favorite…
“For too long, evangelical white Christian communities in the US have had a “come” structure, most of which identifies with the saints. One cannot be a missionary church and continue insisting that the world must come to church on the church’s terms. It must become a “go” structure. And it can do that only when its concerns are directed outside itself toward the poor, the abused, and the oppressed. The church must recapture its identity as the only organization in the world that exists for the sake of its nonmembers.”
How Then Shall We Sing?
September 16, 2010
As we have studied recently in our Sunday worship gatherings, we were created as an unceasing, outpouring of worship. The question is, will we worship our Creator God or turn and worship created things? The Apostle Paul exhorts us in Romans 12 to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. In everything we do and say, we are to be living out a “life of worship” that accurately displays and points others to our Great God. An integral part of this life of worship takes place as we gather corporately on Sunday mornings. God Himself has initiated this type of gathering, and has called us to come together to respond to Him intellectually and emotionally, to receive His grace, and to edify one another. Singing is one of the means that God has given us to accomplish these things.
I recently preached a sermon that deals with the subject of why we sing. If you would like to hear it, you can check it out here.
We desperately want Living Hope to be a people that sing wholeheartedly with faith. Not necessarily because we have a voice, but because we have a song. This Sunday as we gather, we will be once again reminding ourselves of the gospel, and singing the song of the redeemed. As we finish out the week and look toward this Sunday’s gathering, take a few minutes to listen to these songs or read through the lyrics, and let’s prepare ourselves to sing with faith about the hope that we have in Christ, and the joy that we have together in Him. -dlewis
Oh For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
Psalm 96
Oh sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth!
Sing to the LORD, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!
Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth!
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.”
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the LORD, for he comes,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Ken O’Brien and the Gospel
September 15, 2010
I ran across this story at the White Horse Inn blog:
Consultants, authors, and brothers Dan and Chip Heath in the January 15, 2009 issue of Fast Compay talk about the power of incentives for business performance. Most of us are familiar with this routine: a vacation to Palm Springs for the highest performers or lower commission percentages for the lackluster performers. But the Heath brothers argue that inherent in that power is the chance that the incentive will backfire. They offer the following story of Ken O’Brien:
“Ken O’Brien was an NFL quarterback in the 1980s and 1990s. Early in his career, he threw a lot of interceptions, so one clever team lawyer wrote a clause into O’Brien’s contract penalizing him for each one he threw. The incentive worked as intended: His interceptions plummeted. But that’s because he stopped throwing the ball.”
The law in this case, the incentive, backfired and couldn’t produce the desired result. I think many of us resonate with that experience when we consider our relationship to God. Many of us wrongly relate to God on the basis of what we do. If we accomplish our goals (the Law) we get the perk (closeness with God, a sense that God is pleased with us). Of course, this is all an illusion since we cannot keep the Law as God requires nor does God relate to us on the basis of our Law-keeping. Most of the Christian life for some folks is spent trying to convince themselves of this fiction. The Law cannot empower us to throw the ball down the field. Only the love of the game and a sense of our calling/vocation can do that. And that is exactly what the Gospel does for us. It does not hold out a divine carrot for good behavior, the Gospel announces that we are accepted in Christ.
Who is the Bible about?
September 8, 2010
Since the beginning of our study of Acts we have focused on three primary themes that emerge from the text: the gospel, community, and mission. Essentially, the book of Acts shows us that the Gospel creates a community on mission.
So who set this pattern in motion?
When we began our study of the book of Acts we led in with a “prequel”, a quick glimpse into the final chapter of Luke’s first writing project, the Gospel of Luke. In Chapter 24 of the gospel of Luke we see Jesus, resurrected from the dead, teaching his disciples who the Bible is all about. After training his disciples how announce the gospel from all of Scripture, he sends them out as witnesses into an unbelieving world.
I’ve quoted Tim Keller before on the need to read the bible with Christ as the center. Here is a video on his “Jesus is the true and better…” sermon from the Gospel Coalition.
We have 3 weeks remaining in our study of the book of Acts. This week we’ll tackle Acts 21-23, so read ahead if you can!