Today I will be traveling down to Denver for the 2013 EFCA Theology Conference on the topic of Human Sexuality. The denomination always tries to do hot topic issues that are going on in the culture and this year is sexuality. I’ll be doing my best to live blog the speakers as they finish for those who are not able to go to the conference themselves. I’m very much looking forward to hearing all these issues and as always, I love being able to connect with other pastors in the free church. Be praying as it begins today at 1:10 Mountain Time – a couple of the speakers have already had to cancel their trip out to Denver with health issues, thankfully they’ll be able to Skype in.
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EFCA Theology Conference 2013
Posted by mikethestrand on January 30, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/30/efca-theology-conference-2013/
A funny, but good take on the story of Jonah. If the God we worship is the God who created the place we are living, do we live like that?
I think one of the funniest verses in the Bible is Jonah 1:10b. Not for what it says, but for what it implies.
Here it is:
For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
Because – When did he mention this? Was it when he came on board? Did the first mate ask him in his brief interview when Jonah came on board as a passenger?
First mate: Name.
Jonah: Jonah.
First mate: Occupation.
Jonah: Prophet.
First mate: Reason for travel.
Jonah: Running away from my God, because I don’t feel like doing what he commanded.
First mate: <shrugs> Whatevs*. Come on up.
I mean, who knows what kind of other weird motivations to cross a sea this sailor has heard from would be passengers.
Or did Jonah mention it in the galley after dinner during a game of…
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 16, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/16/204/
Preaching From an iPad Part 2 – How To
One of my friends asked me to show him how to set up your sermon on an iPad so here is a guide for how to set up your sermon from Word to ultimately working in iBooks on your iPad.
The first thing you need to do is actually write your sermon! I use Microsoft Word for all my typing. I’ve tried using Pages and NeoOffice and just found Word to be the easiest and most versatile. Once you’re done and ready to send it to the iPad you need to save it so you’d click File -> Save As
That will take you to this screen:
Name it whatever you want to name it, and make sure you save it to a place you can easily find. I always save it to my desktop. Then click in the Format box.
Change the format to PDF, then click Save. Now is when it’s important to remember where you saved it! E-mail it to yourself as at attachment to the e-mail you can access on your iPad. I typically use this e-mail as a chance for some encouragement! Open the e-mail on your iPad and it should look like this:
Click on the attachment to download the file, it will open in a new window like this:
Once you have that open, click the arrow in the top right corner which will give you a list of available apps to open the file with.
Click ‘Open in iBooks’ and it may take a little bit to load depending on the size of your sermon, but you’ll finally have your sermon on your iPad looking like this:
One of the best things about this is you can also see what time it is and how quickly you need to wrap up your sermon! A couple thing to remember about this is typically people have their display set to go to sleep after a couple minutes. I shut mine off for this. I also turned the brightness up all the way and made sure there weren’t any lights behind me that put a bad glare on the screen. I found this very easy to use and preach from without having to shuffle through what would have been 18 pages. My iPad has a smart cover on it too which has magnets in it so when I placed it on the music stand to preach from the smart cover held it in place really well. Feel free to ask me any questions about putting your sermons on your iPad!
Posted by mikethestrand on January 14, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/14/preaching-from-an-ipad-part-2-how-to/
Preaching From an iPad
One of the things I really enjoy is technology. I love learning how to use new technological advances to make my life easier and find ways to do the things I am doing better. I love finding new recipes on Pinterest, following people on Twitter and staying in touch with friends on Facebook. This past week for the first time, I used my iPad to preach, and I loved it! I thought it was much easier than trying to shuffle through paper, and having my Bible app easily accessible was great! We also have almost our whole Sunday service automated so I can control the background music, the slides and the sound board now all through my iPad. We’ve been using a newer presentation program Proclaim for all our services and I’ve found it great to use!
So this past week I wrote out my manuscript and tried to stick to it very carefully as I was dealing with a weighty issue (worship through music). I had it all typed in Word and highlighted the main points I needed to remember, then exported it as a pdf and then preached from it using the iBooks app that apple makes. It was incredible easy. All I had to do was tap on the right side of the screen and the next screen would pop up. If you have an iPad, I highly recommend using it to preach. I even have all my music in it so I lead music for church on my iPad. It really amazes me how easy it is to use and have everything I need in one centralized location.
Posted by mikethestrand on January 14, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/14/preaching-from-an-ipad/
Worship Through Music
I was given the opportunity to preach this past week and began a series on worship, looking specifically at worship through music. My main text was Ephesians 5:19-21 and ended with this point:
“This leads us to the final point from this Ephesians 5 passage “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” Brothers and sisters this continues to be one of the biggest issues in our church today. That first word, submit is something that is not attractive to our generation at all! Everyone wants to be in control of everything they do instead of being accountable to someone. We have convinced ourselves that we can be our own little gods who sit on our own little thrones and control our own destiny. Yet reading through Job we see just how small and insignificant we truly are. We come to church, not to encourage or support each other, but to get what we can from the church. We just looked at why we come together to sing corporate songs of worship together, it’s not for our sake, it’s for God’s sake!
One of the most disheartening things for me about where we are now is that before we sing every song I can look out at you and know who’s going to refuse to sing this specific song because it’s not one you like. Once again, I hate to be the bad guy, but it’s not about you. This is the very reason we had the “worship wars” during the past couple decades, too many have refused to submit to one another and have chosen instead to focus on themselves, their wants and their desires. Believe it or not there’s even some songs we do that I don’t like at all! Wait, you might say, you get to pick the songs. That’s exactly my point! Would you like it if every time we sang a song that I don’t really like I put down my guitar and refused to sing? Besides not keeping my job here very long, that would take the focus off of God and onto myself.”
You can listen to the message in its entirety here.
Posted by mikethestrand on January 11, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/11/worship-through-music/
Children’s Bible Reading
Sorry I’ve been gone for a while! December was a crazy month.
I found a fantastic guide today for children’s Bible readings here. This is something I was always told to do growing up, and even saw it modeling in my parents but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. This breaks the Bible down into very manageable portions (just a few verses at a time) and then asks a specific question about the text and includes room for prayer items. This would be a great way to give kids opportunities to practice writing as well!
Posted by mikethestrand on January 11, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/11/childrens-bible-reading/
Balance in Your Life?
Thom Rainer has posted an article written by Mike Glenn titled “Balance is Bunk.” In it he explains that there will never be balance to your life. This is something that I have been asking regularly since I accepted my role as associate pastor in Cheyenne. How do I maintain order in my life when my job is my life? When I leave church I spend time with people from church. When I’m not at church I’m thinking about and praying through issues going on at church. When it’s my day off I’m still spending time with people from church. When I go on vacation, I still hear about what’s going on at the church. It never ends! I’m grateful that during this season of stumbling around figuring out how I can best serve in this role, I have 2 other godly men speaking truth into my life and encouraging me to take the time I need. Right now I can make the church my entire focus, but what about when I get married? What happens when I have kids? Then my priorities would need to shift.
I appreciate what Mike said in his article, “Here’s the hard reality. All of us have multiple priorities. Each of these priorities has multiple and competing demands. Not only that, but most of these demands are mutually exclusive.” We can’t continue to please everyone, and we shouldn’t try to please everyone. There is 1 person we should work to please and as we work to please him, the other priorities will fall in to place.
I just started reading ‘What Did You Expect?” by Paul David Tripp. In it he says the only way to have a great marriage is to line up the vertical relationship first and make that the number 1 priority. If the vertical relationship to God is your primary focus, the horizontal relationship with your spouse will fall into place as the love and grace God has so graciously extended to your pours out into your relationship with your spouse. I think it’s the same thing with the church. If your vertical relationship with God is in the right place, that will flow out into the way you conduct your job in the church and the priorities will fall in to place. This does mean that at times you’re going to let people down but remember who you’re working to please, not man, but God.
Posted by mikethestrand on November 28, 2012
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2012/11/28/balance-in-your-life/
Questions a Worship Planner Should Ask
Jared Wilson has posted a blog titled “6 Questions Worship Service Planner Should Ask” on The Gospel Coalition website. He asks some very helpful things that should be regularly asked for those of use who plan a worship service on a regular basis. I think the most important question that should be asked that Jared has in his list is the 5 one: Does this element exalt God or man? So many times people take church to be for and about them instead of the one who created them. All of us are incredibly selfish people who will stop coming to a church when it stops fulfilling our wants and desires. Only when we have the vertical (God) component correctly in place can we start to get the horizontal (man/ourselves) component to work the way it is intended to work.
One other question I would add to this list is: What is the history of this element? Is it something that needs to be redefined for people or will everyone understand why it’s being included? One example I can think of is meditation, which might be difficult for someone who had recently become a Christian from a Hindu or Buddhist background. How would we explain that moment to them and would we need to help them understand why we’re doing that?
Posted by mikethestrand on November 28, 2012
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2012/11/28/questions-a-worship-planner-should-ask/
Chronological Snobbery
I’ve been reading a book called ‘The Narnian‘ that is about the life of C.S. Lewis. It’s been an interesting journey into Lewis’ life from his young life through his adult years and I have just reached the point where he became a Christian. (interesting side note, we have 1 remaining recording of Lewis’ voice reading what would eventually become ‘Mere Christianity’ that you can hear here.)
One of the things Lewis was most concerned about was the way he saw his students completely dismissing anything people from history said. I’ve talked a couple times on this blog before about the importance of remembering where we’ve come from, and this book reminded me again of how important it is to maintain perspective. Lewis called this “chronological snobbery” where because we now know that the earth revolves around the sun we dismiss anything said or written during the middle ages because they believed the sun revolved around the earth. We should not be so quick the throw the baby out with the bath water, but instead should look at what they wrote that was good and see how it applies to our lives and times today. Lewis said of the old books, “The great books of the past, then, if we read them properly and carefully, can be mirrors into which we see the sins and limitations of our own period.” This especially goes for the Bible too. No, the Bible writers didn’t know of molecules and planets and cells like we do, but God used them in their time and their place to write down his very Words. Let’s not be so quick to dismiss any thoughts from history, but instead weigh them carefully in light of our own generations blind spots.
Posted by mikethestrand on November 27, 2012
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2012/11/27/chronological-snobbery/
A Year in Ministry
I recently passed the 1 year mark of my time serving at Cheyenne Evangelical Free Church and what a year it has been! God has continued to challenge and stretch me in ways I never thought possible. I’m so grateful for my time here and am looking forward to the years God continues to give me here.
With a year under my belt I thought I’d share a few of the things I’d learned in the past year. This won’t be an all inclusive list, but rather a few key things that have seemed to continue to pop up.
- Schooling will never prepare you for all the challenges you will face in ministry. I’d always heard that ministry would be difficult and they were so right, but I had no idea how much of blessing being in ministry would be. There have been times of difficulty and times of immense joy. From mourning the loss of a church member to rejoicing with one of the half dozen families who welcomed a new baby into the church.
- Ministry would be so easy if it weren’t for the people. Like it or not, the people are the ones you are called to serve. Despite frustrating you and keeping you up late, they are you brothers and sisters in Christ, which ties into the next point:
- Remember who you serve. You need to keep a vertical perspective throughout your ministry. You’ll never be able to please everyone (as I have so quickly learned with music) so remember ultimately you are serving God.
- Give thanks. As the song “Blessed Be Your Name” so aptly puts, remember to give everything back to God, both the blessings and the challenges. Apart from God our ministries would fall apart.
- Get perspective. As a young man it’s very easy to criticize and complain about the ways things are being done because they’re not trendy or cool anymore. It’s incredibly important to remember that there is history to this thing called the church. It’s been around a lot longer than we have and will continue to be around long after we’re here. Don’t lose perspective of your time and place.
- Pray. Praying needs to be first and foremost in your mind. I felt like this was almost too emphasized but I’ve learned you can’t emphasize it enough.
I have the joy of serving with 2 other incredibly godly men, as well as a father who is only a phone call away for advice and council. This past year I’ve gotten to help lead the youth group, lead music on a weekly basis, start a Bible study for our music team, preach, teach an Adult Bible Fellowship, teach a Sunday School, help put on a VBS, play with 2 year olds and have a meal with 70 year olds and through it all I pray God was glorified in and through and despite me. I’m so grateful for a church that encourages me as a stumble toward maturity and pray for faithfulness in the many years ahead.
Posted by mikethestrand on November 21, 2012
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2012/11/21/a-year-in-ministry/
This is Me
Pastor Mike's Musings 