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Week of Prayer 2022

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I love a rhythm that our church has (which was initially birthed from the practice of Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, MN), beginning our year with a Week of Prayer. This year, we launched 1/2 with my friend Luke preaching Luke 10:2, inviting us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into the harvest. The sermon launched (and was entitled) Week of Prayer 2022 and was followed by a Noon Meal in which we prayed and began the year hanging out together.

Luke also developed a Week of Prayer guide to help us have some ways to pray for the unreached who are connected to our church’s international partners.

I’m also super excited about a calendar Luke and his talented wife designed, providing our church ways to pray for our community throughout the year.

So, I don’t know how you intend to begin the year, but might I recommend you spend some time in prayer, allowing God to shape your heart.

Extra Christmas Resources Dec 2021

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Hey everyone! I hope you’re feeling blessed this holiday season. I found some resources that might encourage you this holiday season. So, I thought I’d post them here to keep a record of them.

One contention that preachers make is that the season of Advent is about hope. But, you might not realize just how much hope Jesus being born was to those first listeners. And, Glen Scrivener helps us see that here in this poem called The Night Before Christmas:

The Gaither Vocal Band isn’t my preferred genre of music, but I don’t think there is any denying how incredible David Phelps performance of O Holy Night was in this video. Stick around for the 3:20 mark and then how he brings it home at the end. Pretty incredible:

Finally, for the more theologically minded, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Nicene Creed. But the Credo Magazine devoted an entire issue to this moment in church history. So if you want to have your mind stretched around what it means that the second person of the Trinity came to earth to save sinners, I’d encourage you to seek to digest these helpful articles.

The Nicene Creed issue by Credo Magazine

Weekend Recap – Advent Joy

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My 12/19/21 sermon at Crestview, Advent Joy (Luke 2:8-12), is now online. I tried to dig into what is producing joy in our lives and the reasons why the Gospel is the good news of great joy. I hope this sermon encourages you and helps you prepare your heart for Christmas later this week.

Weekend Recap – Advent Love

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My 12/12/21 sermon at Crestview was on Advent Love from John 3:16. While this verse is super familiar to many people, I thought it gets at the heart of God related to what’s happening at Advent. As we think about the coming of Jesus, the Word becoming flesh, we marvel at how this was an act of love for God to give us Himself. I hope this sermon encourages you. And, check out the church’s Facebook to see highlights from our exceptional children’s program. Thanks so much to Mandy for all she did to organize this. Have a great week.

New Song – O Come, All You Unfaithful

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At Crestview this Advent singing, we love singing many of the cherished carols of Christmas. God has given us such a gift in the music the church has. This year, we introduced the song O Come All You Unfaithful. Here are a lyric video and lyrics:

Lyrics: 

Verse 1
O come, all you unfaithful
Come, weak and unstable
Come, know you are not alone

Verse 2
O come, barren and waiting ones
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done

Chorus
Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you

Verse 3
O come, bitter and broken
Come with fears unspoken
Come, taste of His perfect love

Verse 4
O come, guilty and hiding ones
There is no need to run
See what your God has done

Bridge
He’s the Lamb who was given
Slain for our pardon
His promise is peace
For those who believe

Verse 5
So come, though you have nothing
Come, He is the offering
Come, see what your God has done

Music and words by Bob Kauflin and Lisa Clow © 2020 Sovereign Grace Praise/BMI (adm. worldwide by Integrity Music). Sovereign Grace Music, a division of Sovereign Grace Churches. All rights reserved.

I love these lyrics and this song. We opened our service with this song last week and invited everyone to come and enter in to find hope in the good that Jesus Christ has come for us. I hope it encourages us.

Weekend Recap – Advent Hope

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We enjoyed a fantastic day yesterday at Crestview. My AM Sermon, Advent Hope (Malachi 4:4-6), helped connect the notion of hope to the coming of Jesus (both first and second advents were in view). I hope that’s an encouragement.

Speaking of Advent, Thomas Cranmer, an English Reformer, wrote some masterful prayers (called Collects) to help guide people during advent. Here’s the first one:

Collect for Advent I:
“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son, Jesus Christ, came to visit us in great humility: that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead; we may rise to the life immortal.”

https://theanglicanbreviary.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/advent-collects-2/

The highlight for me was getting to be a part of two young women in our church who gave strong testimony of how Jesus has changed them. Here are some pics I’ve collected from yesterday’s baptisms:

Weekend Recap – Thanksgiving Week

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We enjoyed a wonderful day yesterday at Crestview celebrating Thanksgiving. We continue to use our 2021 Gratitude Guide to reflect on God’s goodness and how we have reason to give thanks. My sermon on 11/21/21, I Thank God (Luke 18:9-14), dug into the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector to give us some diagnostic questions to consider as we think about our gratitude to God.

If you don’t follow the church’s facebook or instagram accounts, check them out. We opened our dinner last night thinking about Psalm 92:1, It is good to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praise unto Your name, O Most High. We had time for people to give thanks and we also opened by singing praise to God’s name as we sang the Doxology together. Here’s the video:

Have a great Thanksgiving week, giving thanks to God for His many blessings.

Weekend Recap – The Darkness

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Yesterday, at Crestview, I preached sermon #2 in our mental health series. The sermon, Confidence in the Darkness (Psalm 43), focused on how God gives us firm footing for the mental health challenges we are facing. In this series, the graphics were designed to show the light and the darkness. Where week 1 was after eliminating the stigma around mental health, this sermon was about giving people in the darkness some sort of spiritual ballast to stabilize them in the fog of mental health realities. I hope the sermon encourages you.

Weekend Recap – Walking In The Light

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My sermon at Crestview from 11/7/21, Walking In The Light (1 John 1:5-10), is online. This sermon was my intro to a short series on mental health and aimed to remove mental health-related stigma among church people. God has meant for His people to be a people shaped by the good news so that people can open up about their realities and be helped with the Gospel, safely, over time. John wrote this passage so that believers can know they have eternal life, and one application would be how we’re walking in fellowship with others. This issue and others were at play in this sermon.

Also, in the sermon, I mention a quiz related to whether we’re part of the stigma. Visit NAMI’s Pledge to Be StigmaFree for more info.

Weekend Recap – Ref Day 2021

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My 10/31/21 sermon at Crestview, Reformed and Always Reforming (2 Corinthians 3:18), is online. Reformation Day rarely falls on a Sunday, so I used this opportunity to think about how the church can grow (or semper reformanda, always be reforming). Specifically, we dug into how we need more love and more Bible (transformation), leading to a new of more Jesus. I hope this sermon encouraged you, and if you haven’t heard it, it will bless you.