Pastor's Corner: WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?

  Discipleship 101: Messenger Service Mark 1:2-8 Introduction : In Brazil, important documents are delivered around the city of Sao Paulo by messengers on motorcycles, “ moto-boys ” they are called. Most of them are on small motorcycles that can zip between the lines of traffic, so they can make their deliveries relatively quickly, but it is dangerous work!  A pedestrian, a car mirror, an opened car door, a pothole, it doesn’t take much when there is so little space between cars and the bikes are moving so fast, for something to go really badly! In the city of Sao Paulo, rarely does a day pass without someone dying in a motorcycle crash.  Yet the messengers have their work to do, they know the risk, and they continue.  They have counted the cost .        We too have been entrusted with a message, and sent out. We’ll see in Mark, a call to discipleship, an invitation to believe in Jesus, and to follow Him. We’ll also see that Mark d...

  Discipleship 101: The Good News and the Mission of God Mark 1:1 Introduction : We started over the last two weeks our series in Mark, but, for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter, we jumped ahead to the ending of Mark. Do you start at the end when you read a book? Well, maybe… but not today! Today, we begin at the beginning .   Some famous first lines in literature sound familiar: “Call me Ishmael...” from  Moby Dick  by Herman Melville. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” from  A Tale of Two Cities  by Charles Dickens. Here’s a tough one, [you may find it a bit transparent…] “I am an invisible man” from  Invisible Man  by Ralph Ellison (1952). The most famous and recognizable “beginning” in all of literature may be the opening words of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... ” For the Jews, the opening words of the Biblical books were even more recognizable, since they also s...

  This Changes Everything! Mark 16:1-8 Introduction : Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! I read a story of one special boy who understood the importance of that message… Little Philip, born with Down's syndrome, attended a third-grade Sunday School class with several eight-year-old boys and girls. Typical of that age, the children did not readily accept Philip with his differences, according to an article in leadership magazine. But because of a creative teacher, they began to care about Philip and accept him as part of the group, though not fully.  The Sunday after Easter the teacher brought… [empty plastic eggs] . Each receiving one, the children were told to go outside on that lovely spring day, find some symbol for new life, and put it in the… [plastic egg] . Back in the classroom, they would share their new-life symbols, opening the containers one by one in surprise fashion. After running about the church property in wild confusion, the students returned to the ...