Pastor’s Notes (Page 17)

• As Julie mentioned in announcements, the president of Covenant College, Derek Halvorson, will be with us Sunday. If you are in high school, or have kids in high school, you’ll want to come early enough to catch announcements. You’ll also have a chance to meet Dr. Halvorson between services. • I think I’ve mentioned a couple times that I’m reading Ian Murray’s one-volume…

• Join us for the Thanksgiving service this evening at 7:00. Be the one-in-ten who turns back to give thanks. Also, remember this coming Sunday is our JOINT SERVICE at 10:00a and, if you would, pass word along to anyone you may suspect is unaware. Thanks. • In a mailer on behalf of persecuted…

• Certain kinds of people are always in conflict, and with time we grow weary of both the person and his or her argument. But Jesus himself was often in conflict. What does necessary, godly conflict look like? Join us for men’s ministry this Saturday at 8:00a — breakfast, fellowship and discussion.

• Most of us assume we have certain natural giftings common to humankind, among them an innate understanding of what love is; how to identify it, offer it, receive it. It’s only when we take seriously that God alone is love, and we fall radically short of the glory of God, that we begin to think of love as something we must learn slowly, carefully, even painfully. So it…

• A few weeks ago I said from the pulpit that I felt there was a spiritual lethargy in the congregation. But I think, now, the lethargy was in me, not you. Over the past few weeks the Lord has been making a number of my own sins and failings evident. It has been a difficult but necessary couple of weeks, and I feel now the relief of having prayed through things from which…

• “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up,” (Gal 6:9). Stay at it. Keep your head in the battle. It won’t be long, now, and “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20) • This is my strategy as a minister: if I can contribute to your strong and deep connection to God in Christ, you will do…

• In the 20th Century the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann famously (or infamously) called for the “demythologizing” of the New Testament. By this he meant we ought to get rid of Scriptural accounts that modern readers found difficult to accept. His argument was that although 1st century readers might accept a worldview that included heaven and hell, a virgin birth,…

• If you are by nature a trusting person, you’ll have to get used to this and guard your heart and mind. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed piece by a rabbi who claims that the ancient God of Israel is “dual-gendered.” The rabbi takes his readers through a tortured derivation of the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants that comprise the sacred name of God…

No Men’s Breakfast this Saturday. If you know someone who might be planning on going, but might not read this, please let them know. Thanks. Read below for an announcement regarding the youth group Dinner Theater July 9. I encourage you to come. But first a few comments on Deut. 6:4ff and raising…

• This note is a little different. Let me give you a brief description of the need, then I’ll offer some of the backstory. The need is this: my neighbor, Martin, a Danish man in his early 50s, has been in Copenhagen for several months and will need to find an economical place to stay in the area when he returns. He has fallen into difficult circumstances and needs help.…