What About The Church?
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Title - What About The Church?
Church - Living Word Lutheran in Katy, Texas (ELCA)
Author - Pastor Mike Aus
Citations - Luke 14:21-22, Matthew 22:3-10, Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 7:5
Quality -Good quality.
Summary - The church's spiritual growth campaign for this season of Lent involves discussing the core beliefs and questions of Christianity in small groups. The seventh and final part of the series involves the question of the Holy Spirit. This sermon asks the question why do we have a church? What did Jesus have in mind when he created the church?
First, we look at the feeding of the 5,000, the only miracle to appear in all four gospels. There are thousands of diverse people there (men, women, children, slaves, Jews, Gentiles, rich and poor) and Jesus invites them all for eating together. He broke down the barriers of society and gave a model for building a church that doesn't discern between different races or histories.
Second, we read the parable of the great banquet. A rich man sends out invitations to a huge party and nobody shows up. The rich man then invites the poor, the lame, the slaves and people who didn't have anything else to do. They invite the good and even the bad. This is what Jesus had in mind for his church, that all that mattered is accepting the invitation.
For instance, "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a popular expression, but is a little self righteous. Jesus didn't say that. He said we should love the sinner and hate the sin within ourselves. Jesus didn't talk about fish all the time, but people throw those on their car. Jesus talked about seeing logs in our eyes and maybe that should be the symbol.
When people come to church they shouldn't see the barriers in society. Church should make people feel better not worse. What if the church was a place where we invited the doubters, the sinners, the rich, the poor, the happy and the sad. What if we could love others as radically as Jesus did. That is a church that could change the world.
(photo from Flickr user: harrilb
Title - What About The Church?
Church - Living Word Lutheran in Katy, Texas (ELCA)
Author - Pastor Mike Aus
Citations - Luke 14:21-22, Matthew 22:3-10, Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 7:5
Quality -Good quality.
Summary - The church's spiritual growth campaign for this season of Lent involves discussing the core beliefs and questions of Christianity in small groups. The seventh and final part of the series involves the question of the Holy Spirit. This sermon asks the question why do we have a church? What did Jesus have in mind when he created the church?
First, we look at the feeding of the 5,000, the only miracle to appear in all four gospels. There are thousands of diverse people there (men, women, children, slaves, Jews, Gentiles, rich and poor) and Jesus invites them all for eating together. He broke down the barriers of society and gave a model for building a church that doesn't discern between different races or histories.
Second, we read the parable of the great banquet. A rich man sends out invitations to a huge party and nobody shows up. The rich man then invites the poor, the lame, the slaves and people who didn't have anything else to do. They invite the good and even the bad. This is what Jesus had in mind for his church, that all that mattered is accepting the invitation.
For instance, "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a popular expression, but is a little self righteous. Jesus didn't say that. He said we should love the sinner and hate the sin within ourselves. Jesus didn't talk about fish all the time, but people throw those on their car. Jesus talked about seeing logs in our eyes and maybe that should be the symbol.
When people come to church they shouldn't see the barriers in society. Church should make people feel better not worse. What if the church was a place where we invited the doubters, the sinners, the rich, the poor, the happy and the sad. What if we could love others as radically as Jesus did. That is a church that could change the world.
(photo from Flickr user: harrilb
posted by LWL PODCASTS at 5:41 PM
1 Comments:
We need more people out there spreading the gospel. Thanks for the word.
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