Words of Welcome

1 Corinthians 12:1-12 When a storm hits, knocking out the power, life can get interesting.  No lights, no refrigeration, no stove, no heat, and no television or computer.  If you have a smart phone you might have access to the outside world, but if you don’t, you’re in the dark.  And that’s not a feeling we enjoy.  Of course, there’s also political power, which I won’t get into!   It seems that power comes in many forms.  It can be used to bless and it can be used to destroy.  Remember that the same atomic elements used to create electricity can be used to destroy cities and nations.   Although power can be dangerous – it’s also essential to life.  In this fifth sermon in my series on Reclaiming a Founding Vision, I want to affirm the power that comes to us from God through the Holy Spirit. Andy Crouch recently wrote a book about “Redeeming the Gift of Power."   Crouch writes that “Power is for flourishing – teeming, fru...

Revelation 2:1-7 We are inheritors of a tradition that has been passed down to us from generation to generation.  Over time this tradition has been adapted and amended.  Some of these adaptations have helped preserve the core message, while others have obscured it.  That message is rooted in the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah that through their descendants the nations would be blessed. The message contained n this covenant was renewed in the ministry of Jesus and then passed on to us. Whenever this calling gets obscured, God finds a way to call us back to this founding vision.  In our reading from Revelation, the angel of God invites the Ephesian church to “remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Rev. 2:5).  This call to repentance is a call to reset our lives to the original vision.   To use a computer analogy, whenever the system gets overly corrupted, it’s time to reset the system by...