School has started

Well, now that school has started, my phone is much quieter :)  What a great summer we had though.  There are many memories that were made that will never be forgotten.  The students were ready to head back to school though and it seems as if they are enjoying themselves with catching up with old friends, working on the new classes and training for their sports.  The past few weeks we have been discussing what evangelism means and how they can take that back to school with them.  You can always stand by the flag pole and scream "If you don't have Jesus, you will burn in Hell!!!" or you can have a more relational, (and quite possibly more effective ministry,) approach to reach the people you love.  We defined evangelism as "Caring about God and the people who don't know Him."  Evangelism doesn't have to be so outrageous.  We talked about three main principles when it comes to evangelism: being a good friend, having a good lifestyle, and being careful with your words.  In order to reach someone with a 'relational' aspect, you first must be a good friend to them.  We talked about what true friends look like.  Also, we talked about what does it mean to have good lifestyle and what integrity means in the Bible.  The third week is when I told them they have to be intentional in the words they use if they want to see their friends know Jesus the way that they do.  All this is to help train them for the first few weeks of school.  This wednesday, we will be tackling "Labels" and the labels we give the people when we see them for the first time.  My goal in this season is to give them some basic training when they are heading back to school.  Please pray for me to help them as they are finding out who they are in this world.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Well, if you weren't at church sunday morning, you missed a Tony message :) With Randy on medical leave right now, I am getting a chance to preach a lil' more frequent lately. This sunday we discussed some pretty heavy stuff! The txt came from James 3.2-6 focusing on how our tongues are very powerful. Just as a ship's rudder can change the direction of a giant boat, your tongue also is just as powerful! In berne, this is something that we all deal with because it's such a small town. One little thing can happen and we tend to drag it out for the sake that there is not much else to talk about! :) The problem is, this will keep us from growing closer to God! It is clear throughout the Bible that gossiping is not tolerated. The Bible defines "Gossip" as "one who reveals secrets, one who goes about as a talebearer or scandel-monger" Gossip is distinguished from sharing information in two ways: the intent, and the information you are sharing! Even Jesus felt strong about this! In Matthew 12.33-37 Jesus belts some "religious leaders" about the issue! His main point in the scolding was "whatever is in your heart determines what you say! A good person produces good words and an evil person produces evil words" So... What do we do about all this gossip? We have to ask ourselves, Why the heck are we gossiping? yes it is human nature, but if we want to grow closer to God, we have got to cut it out!!! If you have an issue with someone the Bible clearly gives us a procedure for taking care of it. First we need to go talk to the person, if that doesn't work, bring a few with you. and if the issue is still there, bring in the church leadership. The last thing we talked about was 3 things we need to think about before we start sharing our information. Perry Noble says before you go sharing... #1 make sure you have your facts straight. #2 make sure that your source is reliable and #3 Resist the urge to seem to be the person "in the know." This is some good food for thought for all of us and I do believe that it was challenging for many.