posts from another era
Friday Photo is BACK!
I was able to get through some old photos this past week. The above photo is one that I took the first day I was at Bethel. The second is when I was in Bent Harbor, MI, getting assessed. The photos may have turned out better than the assessment.
Yeah, I took a little hiatus through August and have had very little internet access since moving off campus into my temporary residence.
I started working though and went around the church and took a bunch of pictures. I'm going to try to incorporate them into my sermon next Sunday. I hope it drives the point home. It should.
A church without a website is a surprising thing. When I first got up to Chicago, I did my preliminary checks on churches in my area by getting on their websites. Some were better than others, but just that they had them gave me an idea of their existence.
All that to say, I just got on board with a church located near Midway in Chicago and they, er, we have no website. So my question goes out to all five of you reading this: What would you like to see in a church website? What would be your top five most desired elements? If you've created a church website before, what did you put into it? And finally, what should not be on a church website?
Faith is not something we give to God. In that case, faith would be a work, and a silly kind of work because it would be work we do even though it doesn't benefit anyone. But exactly the opposite is true. To have faith in God is to be "without works" before God. Faith is the way we as receivers relate apporpriately to God as the giver It is empty hands held open for God to fill.
...
Faith tells us that we do not exist simply to live our three score and ten years without pain, with ease and enjoyment, to accumulate possessions, power or knowledge, to receive accolades and enlarge our egos. How empty such a life would be! Faith is an expression of the fact that we exist so that the infinite God can dwell in us and work through us for the well-being of the whole creation. If faith denies anything, it denies that we are tiny, self-absorbed specks of matter who are reaching for the stars but remain hopelessly nailed to the earth stuck in our own self-absorption. Faith is the first part of the bridge from self-centeredness to generosity.
Volf, Free of Charge, 44, 45.
