Wednesday Memo

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Hi Five Oakers,

I have a few things I want to share with you.

#1 - Get a recap of the service with highlights of our prayers, readings and songs here.

#2 - Here are your comments from the Communication Cards:

  • Great message today – liked the description of purity laws (Jesus fulfilled) and the moral laws (still for today)! 
  • Would it be possible to get a bulletin board put up? I have a friend who called me to put up a flyer about a fund raiser, but there was no where to put it. [Not sure if we will, but it’s not on our radar. Thanks.]
  • Awesome explanation regarding the purity laws versus the moral laws!
  • Fantastic, beautiful worship set. I think “Praise Him”. Hillsong is one of my favorites. And the last song of the opening set was absolutely moving. Thanks for the message!
  • I love this series! I am learning so many new ways to think about the word of God. Thank you Henry! Awesome message.
  • Justin rocks!
  • Henry, great sermon! Love your enthusiasm and passion for God’s word!
  • Awesome message and delivery.
  • Great message, Henry. Time to put away the ketchup! (and feast on the Word).
  • Book of John (life giving Spirit). Epistles of Paul (Fifth Gospel).
  • Thank you, Henry, for challenging us, for motivating us and for your directness.
  • Thanks for another great message, Henry!
  • Henry, thank you for helping me love the Bible and God’s word even more!
  • Again lovely analogies Henry. Looking forward to this wonderful breakdown into scripture.
  • BSF/Bible Study Fellowship – expository teaching, reading and discussion is this burning/changing in our hearts.- an eight year training course. God’s word is the only thing that can change lives. Thank you for this teaching also at Five Oaks. 
  • Been using text giving for past few months. It is slick! Very easy and makes it easy for church to process! [Did Brian Burquest put you up to saying this? Just kidding. Yeah, there are many ways to give and text giving is one of them. Contact the church office if you’d like to know about how to give electronically through withdrawals, by texting or in other ways: office@fiveoakschurch.org.]
  • How is it that I can come here upset or angry and always leave at peace and changed? Thank you.
  • Prayer for service attendance between services 1-4 graders this week in the CLC: 7 at 4:30, 71 at 9:30 and 19 at 11. [Yes, this is a problem. We are going to change service times on Sunday to accommodate more time between services, but it also might help with this a little.]
  • Marriage conference during hunting season? Want to attend, but doesn’t work. [Yeah, bummer. I’m not sure if we could have gotten another date for Rob Rinow to come and do his seminar. We booked him last year and his schedule was already pretty much full. But I do admit, we don’t have any hunters on staff so it’s easy to miss. I’m thinking most non-hunters may not get how important this is to hunters, but I just think of a church scheduling a marriage conference during the Super Bowl since I’m a big NFL fan.]

#3 - Here’s a recap of the message in 10 tweets:

  1. Week 2 of “Eat This Book” series based on Luke 18:31-34.
  2. If u put ketchup on expensive steak I'll attack you ruthlessly even tho it's unimportant. But how you eat this Book is vitally important.
  3. When u read the Bible without carefully listening carefully to what Gos is actually saying you are slathering it in ketchup.
  4. Where is this passage located within the unfolding story of God?
  5. Most of the Bible story is told w/out clearly revealing the climax in the cross & resurrection. Suffering & glory, yes, but not the details
  6. You can't watch the 6th Sense the same the 2nd time. The end reinterprets everything. U see what was really happening all along.
  7. I would be inconsistent if I had to keep purity laws & sacrifices of the OT be/ I'm now made pure & right thru Christ's purity & sacrifice
  8. Purity laws tied to OT worship. Moral laws based on unchanging character of God. They still reveal how to live reflecting God's image.
  9. Tim Keller: “The coming of Christ changed how we worship but it didn't change how we live."
  10. Lk 24:32 -"Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?"

#4 - Off the Cutting Room Floor (good stuff that got cut from the message):

You have a basic choice when it comes to the authority of the Bible. You can accept what Jesus and the apostles said about it and therefore let it have authority in your life—shaping what you believe and how you think and how you live. Or you can decide YOU are a higher authority and know best how to sort out truth from fiction in this book. You can pick and choose what you want to believe and what you think is right. But what you can’t do—and really make any sense at all in doing it—is say you believe in Jesus (you follow him as his disciple), but you don’t believe what he believed about the Bible.

If you’re not convinced in the accuracy and authority of the Bible I urge you to explore this question some more and test your assumptions. There are a lot of great resources for this. But it’s from this book that you learn about Jesus and the resurrection. Jesus came from a people of the Book. You really can’t have Jesus without the Book. The Book is part of the package. You take it out and the whole thing falls apart.

Talk to you tomorrow, Pastor Henry

Thursday Memo

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Hi Five Oakers,

I have SIX things I want to share with you today.

#1- It’s not too late to change the service you attend this year and not disrupt your kids too much if you have them. Please consider attending the 11am service if you attend on Sundays. The 9:30am is getting way too full and the 11am has plenty of room for you. If you’re an NFL fan, set the DVR and come at 11. You’ll enjoy the game more without having to watch all the commercials. If you don’t have a DVR and you’re an NFL fan, stay with the 9:30am. I know you’ll be checking scores, you'll be miserable and you'll likely be distracted from 11:45 until the end of the service. No, better yet, get a DVR!!!

#2- Have you been to the Five Oaks Facebook page and “liked” it? If not, go here.

#3– Here’s the comment we received from the cards we send out to first time guests.

  • 9/9 There was a great spirit of love as we joined in with the music and the stations.  A wonderful service although somewhat loud music for old ears.

#4- I don’t know if I should share the following with you or not. Oh well, now I guess I have to since I brought it up. Are you filling out your Communication Card when you attend? The Nominations Committee had to eliminate about 25% of potential candidates for the Governing Board, Elders and other elected positions due to low attendance. We don’t want to appoint leaders who aren’t here often enough to even know what’s happening. But we suspect many are here and just don’t fill out their cards every time. I hesitated to tell you because now you might avoid it altogether--to get out of being nominated! You wouldn’t do that, would you? Seriously, though, that’s just one more reason filling out the cards is so important. (BTW, since we only practice “participating membership,” we do remove non-attenders from the membership rolls. We try to make contact, though, to make sure all is okay. We’re not totally ruthless.)

#5- I’m very excited that we’re starting a Young Adult Ministry at Five Oaks. We don’t have a ton of college students or recent graduates in our area (mostly families due to many factors), but I think there is still a need for this. Here’s the announcement. Get the word out.

Young adults, join us for a new group meeting on Thursday nights from 7 - 8:30 starting Sept. 27. Leaders: Paul & Nancy Titus and Paul & Debbie Robbins. Meeting at the Robbins home (9186 Princeton Rd, Woodbury). Contact the church office for more information.

#6 - The first, longer version of the Miles4Meals video is ready. We’ll produce another, shorter one before too long. But if you have time check it out.

Love you all, Pastor Henry