Resurrection Weekend Highlights

I want to thank everyone involved in making this last weekend so memorable, starting with the Good Friday service and extending through all five Easter services. And for all of you who served and brought guests, I want you to know that 34 adults and 31 children made first-time decisions to follow Christ!

We had almost 2000 people attend the five services, the largest attendance in Five Oaks' history. It was simply unbelievable that all five services were filled and yet we only had to have overflow seating in the 9:45am service on Sunday. I apologized to one of our members who had to sit in the overflow and he said, "No, that's how we do it in Africa. The members sit in overflow and the guests get the best seats."

Our Good Friday service had a 51% increase over last year. Not sure what was up with that, but I loved it. I didn't do any of the planning and one of our members, Bill Markham, spoke (and did a great job). So I experienced all the elements of the service without knowing what was coming. It was so worshipful and focused and creative. Several people asked me who Dan Lukas was and how much they enjoyed him, and I was able to tell them he is our Hudson Worship Leader. 

It was also fun to have our founding pastor attend one of the services. Unfortunately, I didn't know it until after the service, otherwise I would have pointed him out (which is precisely what he didn't want).

All in all, a wonderful weekend celebrating the resurrection.

Weekend Messages: More Bible Teaching

(This is one in a series of posts I started last Thursday.)

One of the primary changes in my preaching in recent months is to include more Bible teaching. Messages are a mixture of Bible teaching with other elements like introduction, illustration (stories, quotes, etc.), conclusion, challenge and encouragement.

Listen to your favorite preachers on podcasts and you'll see that they all spend a varying amount of time illustrating biblical truth through stories, analogies, quotes, etc. We're continuing to use all those elements, but we're including more teaching and a little less of the other elements.

We are convinced that the kind of inspiration that brings lasting life change is rooted in biblical truth that takes hold in our minds and hearts. Stories are the most powerful way to impact our hearts, but I'm afraid that sometimes we go for the heart without enough teaching that transforms the mind.

I've written before how I use to say, "Our church is educated beyond it's ability to live the truth it already knows." I don't say that anymore. Thanks to REVEAL I know that our biblical and theological knowledge and depth is low. We need more information, not less.

So I am devoting more time in the weekend messages to teaching what the Bible says in that particular text and tying it to the broader Bible story. That means less of some of the other elements in the message, but always remembering that it is preaching, not a Bible lecture.

I describe the shift in my thinking and practice like this: If we want to see our members become more engaged in sharing their faith, we can inspire that change through Bible teaching and sharing inspiring stories and videos that will fire everybody up for a short time (sometimes all the way to the parking lot!). Or we can teach truth that penetrates the heart and matures the soul, thereby seeing deeper, long-lasting change. This is not an either/or proposition. But with the time we have each week for the message, we're leaning more toward biblical teaching.