Wednesday Memo

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Hi Five Oakers,

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

#1- Great weekend of worship. I was drawn closer to God and the wonder of God's love by it. I never tire of seeing our students in the band or vocal team. It was fun to see Jason Kramer playing guitar. Been a while, I think. I loved the opening song. Justin told me he will soon put it into a worship set. 

#2- Check out the songs and prayers from last weekend here.

#3- Here are your comments from the Communication Cards.

  • Great message today Henry! I really like the Jesus in the driver’s seat analogy.
  • Great message today! Honestly delivered.
  • Forgiveness is ever ready – ever ready even before the “sorry” is said. We have a spirit of forgiveness like Christ. Who loved us before we repented? Forgiveness is exponential. Thank you Pastor Henry for preaching the words of Christ. 
  • Henry, always love how you give us “practical” tips on how to be a child of God.
  • Thank you! Yes twenty minutes of spiritual food per week is not enough. No wonder so many of us are starving in Christ. So glad for the challenge and encouragement. Great rebuke or kick in our butts. It was gently, but so needed.
  • Pastor Henry, so I really needed this sermon, so I had to hear it twice to get it to sink in! thanks for preaching the truth to us in love, honesty, and boldly even when we’re getting a good “spiritual spanking”. Missed you while you were getting refreshed, but so glad you took time out.
  • I want to be under the human radar but am low flying with God and Pastor Henry.

#4- Normally Saturday night gets a little more than Sunday (I often make a few cuts since we need a good transition time between services on Sunday), but this week I said something extemporaneously on Sunday that I wish I had shared on Saturday. Here's what I said and something I'd like to add to it. To paraphrase myself, "Can you imagine blaming the gym for you being out of shape. 'If they only had that machine my friend's gym has I would be in better shape.' No, you'd never do that. But that's exactly what we do when we blame the church when we are spiritually stalled."

Let me add, there are many reasons we may feel dissatisfied with our church or its leadership, but it's never appropriate to blame our church for our own spiritual malaise. This is true even if our church has gone bad. I can't think of a more spiritually and theologically dysfunctional church than the one Paul planted in Corinth. Those poor folks had nowhere else to go since they were the only church in town (meeting in homes throughout that city). But I don't think any Corinthian Christian could make a case before God that they were unaccountable for being personally stunted and stalled on account of their messed up church. We are all vitally connected as a body of Christ (a bad church and poor leadership and teaching does impact us and grieve God), but we are ultimately personally responsible for our spiritual condition.

#5- Here's the video from our River Baptism service. I love it.

God bless you all the remainder of this week, Pastor Henry