THERE'S ROOM AT THE TABLE - YOUTH SUNDAY 2009
A NOTE TO READERS: This past Sunday was our church's fall youth-led worship service.  Approximately 25 youth took part in leadership.  The theme for the service was "There's Room At The Table."  Below are the two "sermonettes" given by seniors Holly Mills and Cody Swicegood.  I'm not sure what I'm more pleased with - the powerful way in which they conveyed the gospel of diversity and unconditional love in the body of Christ, or the fact that they felt empowered to share it with their church family in the first place.  Probably both!  I hope you will find their meditations as inspirational and challenging as I did

.....AND THE DONKEY STARTED TALKING
Numbers 22: 21-35Steve LindsleyNovember 15, 2009I think it was a question on Trivial Pursuit one time when I was playing it with some friends: What are the two instances in the Bible where an animal speaks?  My partner and I came up with the first almost immediately – the snake in the garden, harassing Eve to take a tiny bite out of that most troubling, tempting apple.  But the second one?  Well, that stumped us.  The ox in Jesus' manger?    The pigs the Prodigal Son fed?  No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't think of it.They flipped the card over after we g

EGYPT WAS BETTER THAN THIS!
Numbers 13: 1-2, 17-20, 25-28, 30-33, 14: 1-4Steve LindsleyNovember 8, 2009They said it to each other with shouts of unbridled joy as they joined the caravan, leaving behind a generation of forced labor and slavery, leaving behind years and years of Pharaoh's empire built squarely on their hunched backs.  Their feet and legs were still caked with the mud used to make all those bricks.  They said it as they looked off into the horizon, the sun shining on a new day; visions of a land flowing with milk and honey, the Promised Land, dancing in their heads.  They turned to their neighbors and said it over and over again, alm

CLAIM OUR INHERITANCE!
Ephesians 1: 11-23Steve LindsleyNovember 1, 2009They are gathered there in the conference room, awaiting the attorney's arrival. There are shelves on all sides from floor to ceiling with tons of hardback books resting on them.  They are sitting in classy leather chairs situated around a large cherry oak desk. The adult siblings have gathered in the attorney's conference room because the last living parent died the previous month, the funeral two weeks prior; and now it is time for the will to be read.  There is a noticeable tension in the room – not only because of the family rift that's been in existence for years,

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO "THE-COUNTRY-SONG-PLAYED-BACKWARDS"
Job 42: 1-17Steve LindsleyOctober 25, 2009I'm sure you've heard the joke before: what happens when you play a country song backwards?  Well, now it's not just a joke anymore.  Not that I spend a lot of time listening to Disney movie soundtracks, mind you, but it's come to my attention that there's actually a song for a Disney movie by country group Rascal Flatts called “Backwards.”  The lyrics go like this:I was sitting on a bar stool in a barbecue joint in TennesseeWhen this ole boy walked in and he sat right down next to meI could tell he'd been